Illness and Death
The First Lady was noted for her elegant White House receptions and dinners. In late 1891, she began to battle tuberculosis, which at the time had no known treatment other than rest and good nutrition.
She tried to fulfill her social obligations but, after her condition worsened, she traveled to spend the summer of 1892 in the Adirondack Mountains. The air was considered healthful for TB patients. After her condition became terminal, she returned to the White House, where she died on October 25, 1892. Preliminary services were held in the East Room, and her body was returned to Indianapolis for the final funeral at her church.
After the period of official mourning ended, the Harrisons' daughter Mary McKee took up the duties of hostess for her father during the last months of his term.
In 1896, Benjamin Harrison married his late wife's niece and former secretary, the widow Mary Scott Lord Dimmick.
Read more about this topic: Caroline Harrison
Famous quotes containing the words illness and/or death:
“One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)