Angelica Van Buren 1818–1877

Born Kinderhook, New York Honorary First Lady

Poised, confident, educated, and beautiful, Sarah Angelica Singleton grew up in South Carolina at Melrose House, one of three large plantations owned by her father. In 1838, she visited Washington, D.C., where her mother’s cousin—the former First Lady Dolley Madison—introduced her to the widower President Martin Van Buren’s eldest son, Abraham. The young couple married that November, when Angelica was twenty. Two months later, on New Year’s Day, she was installed as the youngest woman to serve as White House hostess.

During the Civil War, Angelica Van Buren’s sympathies were with her wealthy relatives in secessionist South Carolina, who enslaved more than five hundred people and held vast acreage in several counties. As such, she sent blankets from her home in New York City to Confederate soldiers who were being held in Northern prisons. Preserving that human capital—the source of her inheritance—would have been of great importance.

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.