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Abigail Powers Fillmore
Date of Birth: March 13, 1798
Date of Death: March 30, 1853
Age at death: 55
Married: Feb 5, 1826 - Millard
Fillmore
Children: 2 |
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- Well educated, and a prominent member
of New York society Abigail fell in love with Millard Fillmore,
once an indentured servant working in the textile industry
- Fillmore had very little schooling
- As an adult, he sought a formal education,
and enrolled at an academy in New Hope where he first met Abigail,
his teacher
- After his initial education she encouraged
him to study law
- Following law school, they were married
- She continued to teach until the birth
of their first child
- Mrs. Fillmore was the first career
school teacher to be First Lady, and upon entering the White
House she discovered that no books - not even a Bible or dictionary
- could be found
- She petitioned congress for funds
to buy books, and personally supervised their purchase
- Mrs. Fillmore converted the second
floor study to house the collection, thus creating the first
White House Library
- While teaching in New Hope, she began
a campaign to raise funds for the first circulating library in
New York
- Millard purchased the first $2 subscription
- The Fillmore's are wrongly credited
with having the first bathtub in the White House, but they did
purchase a new invention to make life easier - a cooking stove
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