Later Life
After attending the inauguration of James Polk's successor, Zachary Taylor, on March 5, 1849, he and Sarah left by horse and carriage to their new home "Polk Place" in Nashville, Tennessee. Three months later, James Polk died, having had the shortest retirement of any former U.S. President. The United States government granted her a pension of $5,000 per annum. During the American Civil War, she was neutral. Sarah Polk lived on in that home for 42 years. She lived through the longest retirement and widowhood of any former US First Lady, and wore black always. She died on August 14, 1891, at age 87. She was buried next to the president at their home in Nashville and was later reinterred with him at the Tennessee State Capitol. Only 41 when her husband became president, she outlived several of her successors including Margaret Taylor, Abigail Fillmore, Jane Pierce, Mary Todd Lincoln, Eliza Johnson and Lucy Webb Hayes. Only a handful of first ladies have lived longer -- Anna Harrison, Edith Bolling Wilson, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Nancy Reagan, and Bess Truman.
Read more about this topic: Sarah Childress Polk
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“He did not live, he observed life from a window, and too often was inclined to content himself with no more than what his friends told him they saw when they looked out of a window.... In the end the point of Henry James is neither his artistry nor his seriousness, but his personality, and this was curious and charming and a trifle absurd.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle, grandchildren tape-recording grandparents’ memories on special occasions perhaps—no casual storytelling jogged by daily life, there being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)