United States Presidential First Lady. Jane Means Appleton Pierce was the wife of the 14th President, Franklin Pierce. She served as First Lady of the United States from 1853 to 1857. Born the daughter of a Congregational minister and president of Bowdoin College, she could be described as being a petite, frail young lady, who was sensitive with a retiring personality. She was given a private education, was deeply religious, and could play the piano. With the death of her father, the family moved to Amherst where she met through her brother-in-law, a Bowdoin College graduate, Franklin Pierce. After a long engagement, they married on November 19, 1834. They lived in Hillsborough, New Hampshire before moving to Concord. Her husband was an ambitious lawyer and active in politics, but she abhorred politics imploring him to leave the political arena. He served in the New Hampshire State Legislature, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate. Only after she contracted tuberculosis did he resign from the Senate to return home in February of 1842. The couple had three sons but two died young: Franklin, Jr., who died three days after birth in 1836 and Frank Robert, who died at nearly five years old from epidemic typhus in 1843. She believed their demise was a punishment from God for her husband's political involvement. She was aware that her husband attempted to please her by refusing President James Polk's offer to serve on his cabinet as Attorney General, which followed with declining offers to fill a vacancy in the Senate or be a candidate for the governor of New Hampshire. She was pro-temperance movement, whereas her husband drank alcohol, maybe excessively. In late 1846, her husband left to serve in the Mexican-American War, becoming the commander of the 9th Infantry Regiment and reaching the rank of a brigadier general. After the war in early 1848, she was happy with her husband being in partnership in a lucrative law practice near home and watching her son, Benjamin, grow. As a war hero, her husband was nominated as a dark horse candidate for the office of President of the United States. Sources state that she prayed that he would be defeated in the election. When he became the President-elect, she lost all emotional stability and fainted upon hearing the news. Then the ultimate tragedy struck. Before Pierce's inauguration, the family was returning from Boston by train on January 6, 1853 after attending a funeral. The axle on the train broke, hurling their passenger car down an embankment and Benjamin, their eleven-year-old son, was thrown from his seat and instantly killed before his parents' eyes. With Benny's death, all of her three sons had died in childhood. She was now firmly convinced of receiving a punishment from God. Broken mentally and physically, she was not able to attend her son's funeral. She did not attend her husband's inauguration, there was no inaugural ball, nor was the White House prepared for the new President. When months later joining her husband in the White House, she refused to leave her room. In unresolved grief, she often sat crying by the fireplace while writing letters to her deceased son, Benjamin. She did little to help her beleaguered husband, which greatly impacted his political ambitions. Her aunt and the wives of her husband's cabinet acted as the hostess at the White House. This included Varina, the wife of Secretary of State Jefferson Davis. The first and one of the rare social functions, which she attended as First Lady, was at a New Year's Day reception in 1855. Her husband was not offered the nomination for a second term. This was the only time in United States history that an elected president, seeking the candidate for reelection, was not nominated by his political party for a second term. She had endured her husband's four-year term and she did not attend the swearing in of her husband's successor, James Buchanan. Seeking relief from her tuberculosis and the engulfing chronic depression, the Pierces sailed to the Caribbean on board the U.S.S. Powhatan, a government ship loaned to them by President Buchanan. The couple traveled about Europe, but her mental and physical health improved little. The Pierces eventually moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Returning back to New Hampshire after three years brought back a flood of old memories, with her health declining. She lived almost the rest of her life in Andover, Massachusetts at her sister's home. Her sister became her caregiver until her death at age fifty-seven in December of 1863. Her remains were taken to Concord to lie beside their sons, Frank and Benjamin. Franklin, Jr. had been buried in Hillsborough. Her husband outlived her by five years and upon his death was buried beside her in the Old North Cemetery in Concord. The only Concord house ever owned by Franklin Pierce and where the family lived in relative happiness for six years, was threatened with demolition but saved and moved to the Concord Historic District and opened to the public in 1974. It has been restored with many of the furnishings belonging to the Pierce family. Some items are known as "White House Pieces." The two-story wooden home, which was Pierce's wife's home, is called "Pierce Manse," to differentiate from the other Pierce dwellings. Her husband's childhood home, the "Pierce Homestead," is a historical site, as well as the "Pierce Mansion" where he died.