By the time she married Harding she’d already been abandoned by her first husband, Henry “Pete” DeWolfe, and left her baby son, Marshall, to be raised by her parents. She and Harding, a newspaper publisher in Marion, married in 1891 and Florence went to work managing his Marion Daily Star, from balancing the books to spanking the newsboys.
That’s a selection from our lively new profile of Florence Kling Harding, the wife of President Warren G. Harding.
Like Nancy Reagan, Mrs. Harding sometimes consulted astrologers. Unlike Nancy Reagan, she had only one kidney. And she was the first First Lady to vote for her husband, thanks to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Harding himself called her “The Duchess,” for better or worse.
Learn more about an unusual First Lady.