Johnson, Eliza McCardle, 1927, Biographical Sketch

MORE THAN any other President, it was to his wife that Andrew Johnson owed his position in life. It was she who read to him while he sat cross-legged plying his tailor's needle, and later taught him to read for himself and to write. Her attention was first attracted to the illiterate boy when he arrived in Greenville, Tennessee, to which he had migrated from his home in North Carolina. "There goes my beau," giggled Eliza to one of her companions, as the future President trudged down the street. In less than a year, although the bride was only seventeen, and the groom only nineteen, they were married. In later life, Mrs. johnson became an invalid, and the social duties of the White House were administered by the Johnsons' daughter, Martha, wife of Judge D. T. Patterson.1. Brief Biographies of our Presidents and the First Ladies of the Land, 1927, American Weekly, Inc., page 18.