Letitia Tyler
As chronicled in a letter written by her daughter-in-law in the years just prior to her moving into the White House, Letitia Tyler was still able to direct the management of her home and the entertaining that took place there with verbal instruction from her bedroom suite, despite the limitations on her health and movement as a result of her stroke. Her health condition stabilized and thus it was that she continued this management to a smaller degree in the White House. While she largely remained seated in her room, her Bible and prayer books being the only reading at her side table, she took a lively interest in the activities of her young children, their spouses and her growing circle of grandchildren. She was able to speak, often encouraging that the family must enjoy the social opportunities that came to them as the presidential family despite her inability to join them.
The incapacitate First Lady also directed that many charitable contributions be made from her own personal but limited wealth to the poor of Washington, although it is not known if there was any specific charity or group to which her donations were made.
The political turmoil of the Tyler Administration included two consecutive nights in August 1841 when a mob surrounding the house with fire torches, banging drums, blowing horns, shouting epitaphs at the President and burning him in effigy to protest his veto of a bank bill; this protest only aggravated the delicate First Lady's condition, and she worried constantly about the continuous drain on the family finances, since a stubborn Congress insisted that the President pay all expenses out of his own pocket.
On 7 February 1842, Letitia Christian Tyler made what is believed to be her only intentionally public appearance in the state rooms of the White House as First Lady at the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth to William N. Waller. However, an overlooked account in a letter written by her daughter-in-law which described “Mrs. Tyler” in her velvet dress, also suggests that she was brought with the family one evening to the theater.
The First Lady's sister Elizabeth Douglas and her daughter Lizzie Waller arrived in Washington from their homes near Williamsburg,Virginia in time to see Letitia Tyler before she died.
