First Ladies of the United States: Martha Patterson

Martha Johnson Patterson joined her parents Andrew and Eliza Johnson in the White House, where she took on the responsibility of White House hostess.

Of her family’s role in the White House in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Martha Johnson Patterson, daughter of President Andrew Johnson, admitted, “We are plain people, from the mountains of Tennessee, called here for a short time by a national calamity.

Martha Johnson was the eldest child of Andrew and Eliza Johnson, born in Tennessee on October 25, 1828.