Like her husband, Anna Harrison grew up in genteel (wellbred, refined), aristocratic surroundings but lived most of her life on the Northwest frontier in what is now the state of Ohio. She liked pretty clothes and shopping in New York City at the time her father decided to move west to the frontier, where he had purchased large tracts of land. Anna accompanied him.

Not long after arriving near Fort Washington (present- day Cincinnati ), Anna met and eloped with William Henry Harrison (1773-1841; see entry in volume 2). She became a strong frontier woman, bearing ten children. She often served as a teacher for them and for other local children. Few teachers had made their way that far west.

Anna Harrison was sixty-five at the time her husband was elected president. She was not pleased about his new job: "I wish that my husband's friends had left...