Jane Means Appleton Pierce; 1853-1857

Born: 1806
Died: 1863

Jane Appleton came from a prominent New Hampshire family. Her mother had wealth, her father, prestige. He was a Congregationalist minister and president of Bowdoin College who died when Jane was only 13. But he instilled in her a rigid and puritanical outlook on life that did not bode well for a future in politics. Nonetheless, at 28, Jane defied her family's wishes and married longtime beau Franklin Pierce, a gregarious 29-year-old New Hampshire Congressman. It did not take Jane long to develop a distaste for politics. Her discomfort hardened into contempt once Franklin became a Senator, and in 1842, she persuaded him to quit politics for a lucrative private law practice back home.

When she learned that Franklin had accepted his party's 1852 nomination for President, Jane was so dismayed she fainted. Family life became her refuge. She doted on her only child; Benny, having lost her first in infancy and her second when he was four. Just weeks after Franklin's election, Benny was killed in a train wreck before his parents' eyes. Jane fell into a permanent depression. For her first two years as First Lady, she lived as a recluse, shunning social contact and writing letters to her dead son. A trusted relative, Abby Means, looked after her in the White House and assumed the hostessing role. Later on, Franklin managed to coax his wife into limited entertaining, dressed always in black.

Fourteenth President
Franklin Pierce