LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Benjamin Harrison: White House
built 183 days ago
In 1777, the same year Harrison withdrew from Congress, he entered the lower house of the Virginia legislature, where he presided as speaker in the years 1778-81. His three terms as Governor (1781-84) reflected the ascendancy in Virginia of the conservatives, who included in addition to Harrison and Braxton such former extremists as Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee. Succeeded by Henry, Harrison rejoined the legislature (1784-91), holding the speakership part of the time. In 1788 at the Virginia ratifying convention he objected to the Federal Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights. Once ratification had occurred... he supported the new Government. Three years later, Harrison died in his mid-sixties at Berkeley and was buried there in the family cemetery.
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Harrison married Mary Scott Dimmick, the niece of Caroline Scott, after he left the White House. He and Mary had one child named Elizabeth. Benjamin's wife died a few months before Harrison's retirement to Indianapolis. He died on March 13, 1901, after catching the flu which turned into pneumonia. He was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis next to his first wife Caroline Scott Harrison.
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Harrison astonished his family in 1896 by marring thirty-eight year old Mary Lord Dimmick, the daughter of his wife’s sister. Mary spent many holidays with the Harrisons and in 1892 attended her Aunt Carrie at Loon Lake and at the White House during the last month of her life. The wedding took place in April of 1896 in New York City and Berkeley Lodge served as a honeymoon retreat that summer. The following February a daughter they named Elizabeth was born.
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Harrison married Caroline Scott on October 20, 1853. They met in college. They had 2 children, Russell in 1854 and Mary in 1858. Mrs. Harrison had the first Christmas tree put up in the White House in 1889. During the election campaign, Caroline became sick with tuberculosis and died.
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The details of their relentless struggle for survival raising nine children were kept secret from Benjamin during his early years. Mrs. Elizabeth Harrison died in 1850 while Benjamin was away at school. In the fall of 1849, money was so tight, his father seriously doubted that he could keep the two oldest boys in school. The family was laid low at times due to illnesses, cholera, smallpox, influenza, typhoid, dysentery, scarlet fever and eventually the sad news that his baby brother Findlay had died. He grew up at The Point at first a slender, wiry stripling and later became a chubby, square-shouldered boy, so blond as to be almost white-haired.
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Young Benjamin set up a law practice in Indianapolis and married Caroline Lavinia Scott, an accomplished artist. In the 1870s, they spent $28,000 to build a lovely 16-room Italianate mansion. During the 1880s and early 1890s they lived in Washington D.C. while Benjamin served in the U.S. Senate and then in The White House.
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