Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1894 — A White House Mistress. [ARTICLE]

A White House Mistress.

“When, then, will you marry me?” It was the hundredth time of asking, and the first time of showing impatience. “I will marry you, sir, when you are elected judge I” The young man’s eyes flushed sharply- “ And I,” he retorted, “will have you, when your father is elected Governor of Tennessee!” “A Rowland for an Oliver.” The speakers were David T. Patterson, a clever young Democratic lawyer of Tennessee, and Martha Johnson, eldest daughter and child of Andrew Johnson, who was at that time the apparently hopeless candidate of his party for the Governor of his State. The time was the night before the election, and the place the parlor of the Johnson homestead at Greenville, Tennessee, writes M. V. Moore in a delightful sketch, with portrait, of Mrs. Patterson the only surviving member of the immediate family of Andrew Johnson, in the Ladies’ Home Journal. Whether both these young people had private knowledge of the Democratic victory which was to sweep their State on the morrow, or whether they were merely amusing themselves with “lovers’ perjuries,” for Jove's and their own amusement, cannot be known, as the wedding day was settled for them by the result of the election, and their marriage was solemnized at their Greenville home on the thirteenth of December, 1856, David T. Patterson having been elected judge on the same ticket with his future father-in-law.