Lucy Hayes

Lucy Hayes was born in Chillicothe, Ohio on August 28, 1831. After her father’s death she moved with her mother to Delaware, Ohio where in 1847 she met her future husband, Rutherford B. Hayes the 19^th President of the United States. Lucy enrolled in Wesleyan Women’s College (now Ohio Wesleyan University) and was the first First Lady to graduate from college.

During the Civil War, Lucy spent two winters with him at a camp in Virginia, nursing him back to health while he served with the Union forces. She also worked with other hospitals and camps during the war.

A vigorous opponent of slavery, Hayes contributed to her husband’s decision to abandon the Whigs for the antislavery Republican Party. During the American Civil War, she visited Hayes often in the field. Before becoming First Lady of the United States, she was twice First Lady of Ohio, First from 1868 to 1872 and again from 1876 until 1877 when her husband became President. While her husband was governor of Ohio, she helped establish the state Home for Soldiers’ Orphans in Xenia, Ohio.

As First Lady, she was widely proclaimed for her simplicity and good sense, shunning the fancy lifestyle favored by her predecessor, Julia Grant. She supported her husband's ban of alcoholic beverages at state functions. Her decision to serve only nonalcoholic beverages in the White House was applauded by advocates of prohibition but ridiculed by others, and partly due to her popularity, the title "First Lady," previously rarely used, became common during her White House years. She was also given the name "Lemonade Lucy" and the Hayes administration became known as "the cold water regime." The Women's Christian Temperance Union supported her policy and in gratitude commissioned a full-length portrait of her, which now hangs in the White House. She also instituted the custom of conducting an Easter egg roll on the White House lawn.

In 1881 she retired with the President to Spiegel Grove in Fremont, Ohio. She died of a stroke on June 25, 1889, and was buried at Spiegel Grove. Upon her death, flags across the United States were lowered to half staff.