Anna Harrison - Early Life and Marriage

Early Life and Marriage

Anna was born at her father's estate Solitude, just outside Morristown, New Jersey (present day Wheatsheaf Farms subdivision off Sussex Avenue in Morris Township, New Jersey ) on July 25, 1775 to Judge John Cleves Symmes and Anna Tuthill Symmes of Long Island. Her father was a Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and later became a prominent landowner in southwestern Ohio. When her mother died in 1776 her father disguised himself as a British soldier to carry her on horseback through the British lines to her grandparents on Long Island, who cared for her during the war. Her father was also a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and the Chairman of the Sussex County Committee of Safety.

She grew up in Long Island, receiving an unusually broad education for a woman of the times. She attended Clinton Academy at Easthampton, Long Island, and the private school of Isabella Graham in New York City.

When she was thirteen years old, Anna went with her father and stepmother into the Ohio wilderness, where they settled at North Bend, Ohio. While visiting relatives in Lexington, Kentucky in the spring of 1795, she met Lieutenant William Henry Harrison, in town on military business. Harrison was stationed at nearby Fort Washington. Anna's father thoroughly disapproved of Harrison, largely because he wanted to spare his daughter the hardships of army camp life. Despite his decree that the two stop seeing each other, the courtship flourished behind his back.

They married on November 22, 1795 at the home of Dr. Stephen Wood, treasurer of the Northwest Territory, at North Bend (her father was away in Cincinnati on business). The couple honeymooned at Fort Washington, as Harrison was still on duty. Two weeks later, at a farewell dinner for General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, Symmes confronted his new son-in-law for the first time since their wedding. Addressing him sternly, he demanded to know how he intended to support his daughter. Not until his son-in-law had achieved fame on the battlefield did Symmes come to accept him.

The couple apparently had a happy marriage despite the succession of tragedies in the untimely deaths of five of their grown children.

• Elizabeth Bassett Harrison (29 September 1796-27 September 1846)
• John Cleves Symmes Harrison (28 October 1798-30 October 1830)
• Lucy Singleton Harrison (5 September 1800-7 April 1826)
• William Henry Harrison Jr (3 Sept 1802-6 Sept 1838); married to Jane Irwin Harrison
• John Scott Harrison (4 October 1804-25 May 1878)
• Benjamin Harrison (5 May 1806-9 June 1840)
• Mary Symmes Harrison (28 January 1809-16 November 1842)
• Carter Bassett Harrison (26 Oct 1811-12 Aug 1839)
• Anna Tuthill Harrison (28 October 1813-5 July 1845)
• James Findlay Harrison (15 May 1814-6 April 1817)