Literally.
Rich FLOTUS Julia Gardiner Tyler
Julia Gardiner (1820-1869) was a wealthy New Yorker. Her father, David Lyon Gardiner owned considerable property in Long Island. Her mother, Juliana MacLachlan was the only child of an even wealthier brewer.
Julia and her two brothers and sister were given every advantage that money could buy. A good finishing school education, fine clothes, jewelry, carriages, vacations, and the opportunity to meet and mingle with the rich and famous of society. It also included a two-year trip abroad when Julia was around nineteen. They shopped. They also met and mingled with a European titled and privileged social set.
Pretty, well-mannered, and gifted in the feminine arts, Julia and her sister were hits. When they returned, her father (who had served a couple of terms as NY State Senator and retained the title) decided that their now-marriageable progeny might benefit from a mix and mingle with American hierarchy, ergo a “season” in Washington.
There she met President John Tyler, whose ailing wife would die within the year. He was enchanted, and despite the 30-year age gap between them, they married in 1844. She served as First Lady for eight months and was delighted to plow Gardiner funds into fixing up a dowdy White House.
Tyler was not re-elected however, so the newlyweds went to live at Sherwood Forest, his recently built home on the Virginia peninsula.
Adopted Daughter of Dixie
The wealthy and somewhat spoiled New York belle adapted well in Virginia. Her social graces, pleasant disposition, and above all, wealth, translated easily into Southern culture. Julia happily took her turn hosting dinners and balls and barbecues as mistress of a successful plantation.
The Tylers were happy, and seven little Tylers made regular appearances – in addition to the seven grown Tyler children of John Tyler’s first marriage.
Julia wrote home regularly to her mother and surviving siblings, usually enclosing a wish-list of difficult to find items she wanted for their home. They were glad to oblige.
For fifteen years, life was good, even with the darkening clouds of war.
The War and The Beginning of Julia’s Troubles
When the Civil War began, John Tyler, now seventy, was naturally torn. He had been President of the United States, and felt a deep affection for his country, and the responsibility of being an elder statesman. But like many Southerners, his state was his country. And after an aborted try at a last-ditch “peace conference” that he was asked to chair, Fort Sumter put an end to any last-ditch efforts. Virginia seceded along with the other Southern states, and the former President was elected to the Confederate congress.
But even before he could take his seat, he died.
Julia at 41, was a widow with seven children under fifteen, a great many debts, and a large plantation which included around 70 slaves. And as expected, between the war and the Tyler “first” children, it would take years for the estate to be settled, and the Tyler money, which was always comfortable, was never in league with the Gardiners.
Julia Goes North
Mrs. Ex-President Tyler (as she referred to herself) had no intention of going north at first. In fact she was generous in loading wagon after wagon with supplies for the Confederate Army. But in 1862, Union General George McClellan mounted a massive campaign on the Virginia Peninsula, very very close to the Tyler home. “Mrs. Ex” and her children were seriously in danger, and her friends urged her to apply for safe passage north where she had family.
She applied, and safe passage was granted – provided she take the oath of allegiance to the Union. She adamantly refused. She did however send her older children care of her mother.
Selling her expendable items of value, in 1863 she arranged a circuitous route, traveling with the two youngest children, first to Wilmington, NC, and then to Bermuda, where she found passage on a ship to New York. There they took refuge in the elegant Staten Island mansion of Juliana Gardiner. Some time later, she learned of the devastation of Sherwood Forest. While it had not been burned, it had been vandalized past repair.
Perhaps worst of all, was her growing estrangement with her last surviving sibling, David Gardiner, also residing in his mother’s household. A staunch Union supporter, he bitterly resented his sister’s Confederate support, which included distributing anti-Lincoln pamphlets and raising money and goods for Southern prisoners-of-war languishing in Northern prisons. Their arguments and quarreling became incessant, and borderline physically violent.
Meanwhile…
Juliana Gardiner, a formidable woman now past 60, had witnessed the deteriorating relationship between her two children, and took her daughter’s side. She asked David to leave her household and move to his own nearby property. Bitter and angered, he left and never saw her again.
Meanwhile-some-more, Juliana decided to make a new will. Only a day before her death in 1864, from a severe case of bronchitis, the will was signed. Julia was the chief beneficiary, which included her mother’s Staten Island home, and some rental income on property designated for David, until such time that the federal government made restitution for losses to the Tyler estate in Virginia.
It was a complex situation, which as might be expected, severed the sibling relationship completely, to a point that the will was contested by David Gardiner and fought in the courts for years.
Between court costs and the damage to Sherwood Forest and other properties she owned, waiting long years for federal compensation and a hard-lobbied pension as a former FLOTUS, plus raising and educating her children, Mrs. Ex-President Tyler was strapped for money for the rest of her life, forced to live proud, but frugally.
A far cry from the sumptuous life she had led for forty years.
Sources:
Anthony, Carl Sferrazza – First Ladies 1789-1961, William Morrow,1990
Seager, Robert III – And Tyler Too, McGraw Hill, 1963
Julia Tyler
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/first-families/julia-gardiner-tyler/
Presidential History Blog 
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