First Ladies

Long before the title had a name, the women of the White House were shaping how the country saw its presidents. They set the tone of official Washington, answered mountains of mail, hosted kings and farmers alike, and often served as their husbands' most trusted advisers, all without a salary or a job description.

Many of us grew up with First Ladies who felt like part of the family. We copied their hairstyles and hemlines, read about their children in Life and Look, and watched them on the evening news greeting foreign leaders or visiting hospitals and classrooms. Some were glamorous, some were plainspoken, and a few surprised the country by taking on causes that had rarely been discussed in public before.

These four quizzes follow those women from the earliest days of the republic to the late twentieth century. One covers the founding generation and the nineteenth century, another the first half of the 1900s, a third the years from Camelot through the 1980s, and the last the causes, firsts and later lives that kept them in the news. There is no timer and no rush, so pour a cup of coffee, settle into your chair and see how many you know.