Mary Johnson

Mary Johnson Stover (May 8, 1832 – April 19, 1883) was a daughter of 17th U.S. President Andrew Johnson and his wife Eliza McCardle. Stover and her three children lived at the White House during the Johnson administration, as Stover's husband, a soldier in the Union Army, had died during the American Civil War and their East Tennessee homestead had been pillaged by Confederates. Stover assisted her older sister Martha Patterson as an acting First Lady of the United States. Biography Early life and first marriage Mary Johnson was born May 8, 1832, in the family home on Water Street, Greeneville, Tennessee, the third-born of the five children of Andrew and Eliza (McCardle) Johnson. Andrew Johnson, who had grown up quite poor and had received a minimal education, made a point to send his children to good schools. Mary attended Rogersville Female Institute (originally Odd Fellows Female Institute) in Rogersville, Hawkins County, Tennessee. In 1852, while her father was serving what would be his last of five terms as the Representative of Tennessee's 1st congressional district, Mary Johnson married Daniel Stover, a farmer from Carter County, Tennessee. According to the 1928 biography of Andrew Johnson by Winston, Stover was "a typical blue-eyed mountaineer, soon to become Colonel of the Fourth Tennessee Union Infantry. He was a man of high courage...Dan, a nephew of Mordecai Lincoln, was the person of all others Andrew Johnson would have selected as a son-in-law." Stover had a "fine plantation" in the Watauga Valley. In 1860, on the cusp of the Civil War, the family was living together in Carter County. Daniel Stover owned a farm worth and a personal estate worth . Their daughter Eliza Johnson Stover, age five, was attending school. Sarah Drake Stover was three years old, and the baby, Andrew Johnson Stover, was two months old.