U.S. First Ladies Second Edition Quiz

Answer: Andrew Jackson

Rachel Donelson's marriage to Captain Lewis Robards ended in a divorce, but the said divorce was not officially pronounced when she remarried with Andrew Jackson, who was to become the 7th US president. When the divorce became official, in 1784, they married again. She died when she was 61 years old, on December 22nd 1828.

Answer: Warren G. Harding

In 1880, when she was 19 and pregnant, Florence Harding eloped with Henry "Pete" Athenton DeWolfe. Soon after her son's birth, she left DeWolfe and returned home to her parents, getting a divorce in 1886. She met Warren Harding, the editor of her town's newspaper, in 1890, and they married in 1891, when he was 25 and she was 30. She was First Lady from March 4, 1921 to August 2, 1923, when President Harding died in San Francisco. Florence Kling DeWolfe Harding died of renal failure on November 21, 1924, at the age of 64.

Answer: Herbert Hoover

Lou Henry was born in 1874 in Waterloo, Iowa. In 1894, she attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California where she met Herbert Hoover. They married in California in 1899, when they were both 24 years old. They honeymooned in Shanghai, China. The couple had two sons. First Lady Lou Henry Hoover died of a heart attack on January 7, 1944, in New York City, and was buried in Palo Alto, California.

After her husband's death in 1964, she was reinterred at West Branch, Iowa, next to him.

Answer: Dwight D. Eisenhower

Mamie Geneva Doud met Lieutenant Dwight Eisenhower in October 1915, and they married the following year, when she was 19 and he was 25, They had two sons, the first one dying of scarlet fever when he was a baby. For many years, she was an 'army wife', following her husband where he was assigned.

She was the First Lady between 20 January 1953 and 20 January 1961, after which she and her husband retired to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She died on 1 November 1969 when she was 82 years old.

Answer: Richard Milhous Nixon

Better know as Pat Nixon, Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in Nevada and grew up in Los Angeles, California. Richard Nixon is reported to have asked her to marry him on the night that they met. They did become man and wife on June 21, 1940. She was always supportive and helpful to her husband in his political career.

She was the US First Lady from January 20, 1969 to August 9, 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned as President, following the Watergate Scandal. Afterwards the couple moved to California and later to New Jersey. Pat Nixon died of lung cancer in 1993, aged 81.

Answer: Jimmy Carter

Born in Georgia in 1927, Rosalynn Smith married Jimmy Carter, also from Georgia, on July 7, 1946, and she had three boys, John William, James Earl III and Donnel Jeffrey while she followed her husband who was in the Navy, and a daughter, Amy, later on.

When he was released from military duty, the couple returned to Georgia to run the family peanut farm. During her stay in the White House, from January 1977 to January 1981, she served on the President's Commission on Mental Health, was a strong advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment and numerous other humanitarian causes.

After her turn as First Lady, she never stopped campaigning for charitable causes, and helping her husband with his Habitat for Humanity project. She was still active at age 83.

Answer: Ronald Reagan

Nancy Davis was a Hollywood actress in the 1940s and 1950s, who married the then president of the Screen Actors Guild, future US President Ronald Reagan. It was her first marriage and the second for him, having been previously married to Jane Wyman. The couple had two children.

She was California's First Lady from January 3, 1967 to January 6, 1975, and moved to the White House as the US First Lady on January 20, 1981 while she remained for eight years, until 1989. Concerned about the drugs problem, she founded the "Just Say No" drug awareness campaign.

At the end of the presidency, the couple returned to Bel Air, Los Angeles, California. After her husband's passing, she remained active in social projects.

Answer: Gerald R. Ford

Elizabeth Ann Bloomer, born in Chicago, Illinois, married William C. Warren in 1942. The couple had no children, and they divorced in 1947. She married lawyer and World War II veteran Gerald Ford on 15 October 1948. She was to remain his wife for fifty-eight years until he passed away.

She gave birth to three sons: Michael Gerald, John Gardner and Steven Meigs, and a daughter, Susan Elizabeth. Her husband became Vice President to Richard Nixon in 1973 when Spiro Agnew resigned, and President in 1974 without having been elected, when Nixon resigned. Betty Ford remained in office from August 9, 1974 to January 20, 1977.

In 1975, Time magazine named her Woman of the Year. After her stay at the White House, she remained active in public life, and founding the Betty Ford Center.

She died July 8, 2011, aged 93.

Answer: Martha Dandridge Custis

Martha Dandridge, born in 1731, married Daniel Parke Custis when she was 18 and him much older, and had four children with him, two of which survived to young adulthood. Their plantation was called the White House. Custis died in 1757 and Martha became a rich widow.

She married George Washington on January 6, 1759 at her White House plantation. Their union is reported to have been a happy one. They never had children but raised the two surviving sons of her previous marriage. She became the very first First Lady on April 30, 1789 and remained so until March 4, 1797, succeeded by Abigail Adams. "Lady Washington", as she was known during her lifetime, died on May 22, 1802, at Mount Vernon, Virginia, at 70 years of age.

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

When she was 18 years old, in 1766, Martha Wayles married Bathurst Skelton who died two years later. Her second marriage was with Thomas Jefferson on the first of January 1772. Their union produced six children, none of which lived longer than 25 years.

At the death of her father, she inherited more than 100 slaves who became the property of her husband, according to the law at that time. She is reported to have suffered from diabetes, and died in Charlottesville, Virginia, when she was only 33 years old.