Caroline Scott Harrison: Beyond the Portrait

We are grateful to the White House Historical Association, which recently honored the memory of Caroline Scott Harrison as our First President General in a social media post. Here is the information the group, to which we presented a DAR Historic Preservation Medal at the 130^th Continental Congress, posted on January 8:

“During her time in the White House, First Lady Caroline Harrison served as the first president general of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR). The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution was founded on October 11, 1890, and Mrs. Harrison was asked to lend her services due to her interest in history and the prestige of having the first lady involved in the organization….

“Mrs. Harrison spoke at the First Continental Congress for the Society, which was held at the Church of Our Father on 13th and L Street in Washington, D.C., in February 1892, at the close of the White House social season. During her opening remarks she stated, ‘I welcome you, regents and delegates of the society, to this city and to the first congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution, with the hope and desire that your conference may be one of pleasure to yourselves, having the promise of strength and progress for the future.’ On the evening of February 24, 1892, Caroline hosted a reception in the East Room of the White House for nearly one hundred NSDAR regents and delegates.

“Mrs. Harrison served as president general until she passed away in 1892 from tuberculosis. General Henry V. Boynton remembered Mrs. Harrison’s time as president general of the NSDAR fondly, writing, ‘She was not only the presiding officer, but a working member of it and took the liveliest interest in its proceedings. The board of management, I know, ascribed the great success of the society as much to Mrs. Harrison’s work as to all other influences. It is now a very flourishing society.’

“Upon her passing, the society sent a resolution of all Mrs. Harrison’s services as president general to President Benjamin Harrison and a floral design of the group’s insignia to the White House. The NSDAR later commissioned and donated a portrait of Mrs. Harrison (pictured), painted by Daniel Huntington in 1894. It remains in the White House Collection today.”

“My first recollections of my father’s sister are as the sprightly, gracious hostess of the quaint, cosy (sic) and very pretty cottage on North Alabama Street in Indianapolis, where the family lived when their children were small. It was a story and a half cottage with a lovely yard which Mrs. Harrison always had full of flowers. An ample backyard had a chicken yard, stable yard and small stable… . A familiar sight was the future First Lady of the Land in that chicken yard. The chickens all knew her, flocked about her, jumped up upon her and ate out of her hand. And how she loved it.”

“A little later on when a little more prosperity came their way, they had a horse and carriage with two seats. The future First Lady was the first friend of the horse and she learned to ‘hitch-up’ and to drive him.”

“Caroline Scott Harrison was a light-hearted, bright and happy woman who could always make the best of things no matter how wrong they went. She was very sympathetic and very strong in her likes and dislikes. She had the keenest sense of humor and a practical joke was the delight of her life. Many a one did she play on members of her family and close friends.”

“…Mrs. Harrison was a good pianist and had a sweet voice for singing.”

“Mrs. Harrison’s oil paintings lined the walls of their home in Indianapolis, especially the hunting scenes, which particularly pleased her husband. … Later on Mrs. Harrison took up watercolor painting, and then china painting. In the last named, she made quite a name for herself. She exhibited her work several different years in the Indiana Exposition and two different years she carried off the first prizes. When the family came to the White House, Mrs. Harrison fitted up a studio in the attic….”

“Another of Mrs. Harrison’s White House hobbies, as it might be called, was her effort to have special china, with appropriate design made for the White House, to be used permanently and exclusively in the White House. The custom has always been for an in-coming Presidential family to select their own china, that used by the predecessors being sold or given way, which Mrs. Harrison considered, rightfully, an unwarranted extravagance. She then made a beautiful design for china, painted a great deal of it herself and it was installed as the Harrison administration china…. (the) design she sincerely hoped would be adopted by Congress for the White House exclusively. But again her hope was futile, so the scrapping of the china of each administration goes on.”

Born in Ohio in 1832, Caroline Scott Harrison was assigned National Number 7 and joined the Mary Washington Chapter in the District of Columbia as a descendant of John Scott, a commissary general of the Pennsylvania lines. The daughter of two college professors, she was a music instructor at Oxford Female Academy before her marriage.