Lucy Webb Hayes
Lucy Hayes was the first of the president’s wives to be routinely referred to as the First Lady, and while history books sometimes refer to her as Lemonade Lucy – due to the temperance practiced in the Hayes White House – she was not referred to by that name in her lifetime. Well educated and a published writer in her college days she was a staunch supporter of the suffragist movement. In one essay she wrote that a woman’s mind was as strong as a man’s, and that women were man’s “… equal in all things, and his superior in some.”
During the Hayes’ presidency reconstruction of the South came to an end, and the position of newspaper reporter began to be occupied by more and more women, many of whom focused their attention on the activities and opinions of the First Lady. The Hayes’ came into a White House which was deteriorated and damaged; during the Lincoln administration years before visitors often cut patches from drapes and carpets for souvenirs, yet to be repaired or replaced. Lucy took what steps she could to preserve the mansion’s heritage, hampered by inadequate funds from a penurious Congress.
Although she was the first to be referred to as the First Lady as a matter of routine, Lucy had no official staff to assist her in her duties, nor had any of the First Ladies who preceded her. By that time the White House had developed a considerable staff to run the mansion, and the domestic staff was generally considered to be under her purview. As First Lady she oversaw the installation of hot and cold running water in the White House.
Lucy strongly pushed for the completion of the Washington Monument, work on which had been suspended since the Civil War. When construction began again it was no longer possible to quarry marble which matched that already present in the obelisk; the line of the color change is clearly visible today when viewing the completed monument.
It was also Lucy Hayes who introduced the tradition of the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House Lawns. Although the White House was a temperance house while she and her husband were its tenants, the decision to ban alcohol was actually her husband’s and Lucy went on record as an opponent of national prohibition. Lucy joined neither temperance groups nor suffragist organizations as First Lady, believing it may harm her husband politically. Whatever her personal views may have been, her role as First Lady was as a moderate.