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Sarah Angelica Singleton was the daughter-in-law of 8th United States President, Martin Van Buren. She married the President's son, Abraham, and assumed the post of first lady because the president's wife had died 19 years earlier.
She was daughter of South Carolina planter Richard Singleton and Rebecca Travis (Coles) Singleton, and was raised at the family plantation Home Place, in Sumter, South Carolina. During the late 1820's and early 1830's she attended Madame Grelaud's Seminary in Philadelphia along with her older sister Marion; such seminaries offered young ladies instruction in subjects such as grammar, languages, deportment, history, and music.
After leaving school, Angelica spent time in Washington, D.C. with the family of a distant relative, Senator William Campbell Preston. Her mother's cousin, Dolley Madison, the widow of President James Madison, introduced her to Washington society, and in November 1838 Angelica married Abraham (Abram) Van Buren, the President's oldest son and personal secretary, whom she had met at a White House dinner earlier that year. The President reportedly approved of the marriage and the ties it brought between the White House and the powerful Southern aristocracy.
After an extended European honeymoon, Angelica returned in 1839 with her husband to live in the White House and to serve as its hostess for Van Buren's remaining years in office. According to contemporary reports, Angelica was "universally admired" in Washington, and the French minister Adolphe Fourier de Bacourt, generally critical of Americans, remarked that "in any country" Angelica would "pass for an amiable woman of graceful and distinguished manners and appearance."
When President Van Buren left office in 1841, Angelica and Abram first visited with Angelica's family in Sumter, where Angelica gave birth to their first son, Singleton. (A daughter born during her residency in the White House had lived only a few hours.) The family eventually settled at Van Buren's estate, Lindenwald, in Kinderhook, New York. The Van Burens continued to winter in South Carolina, and she later inherited Home Place. In 1848 the Van Burens moved to New York City, where Angelica was known for her charitable work.
A collection of books known as "The Barnwell-Singleton Collection", was donated to the University of South Carolina, Columbia, by Mr. & Mrs. David Phillips, in early 1997, from the family library in the home of Miss Malinda Barnwell of Florence, South Carolina. It consists of two groups of books.
One group contains books from the library of the Revd. Robert Woodward Barnwell (1831-1863), Professor and Chaplain of South Carolina College, and of his son the Revd. Robert Woodward Barnwell (1860-1952), Miss Barnwell's father.
These books cover general belles-lettres, they also have a strong theological (high Episcopalian) element. Notable among them is a first edition of 'George Eliot's' first book, The Life of Jesus, by David Friedrich Strauss, 3 vols. (London: 1846), in original boards, and many volumes of the Tractarian series Lives of the Fathers.
The second group is from the library of Angelica Singleton Van Buren (1816-1877), the South Carolina-born daughter-in-law who was President Martin Van Buren's hostess at the White House. It includes the literary annuals and album poems of her schooldays in Philadelphia, books bought during her European honeymoon tour in 1839, and books reflecting her later interest in social conditions. Additional items with the collection include books from her niece Mary Carter Singleton (a group with many volumes by or about women, from the 1840s and early 1850s), and books from her three sons, Singleton, Travis and Martin.
NOTES:
Angelica's niece was, Mary Carter Singleton, whose son, Rev. Robert Woodward Barnwell, married Malinda McBee Brunson. Malinda's son, Dr. Robert Woodward Barnwell, was married second to Harriet Keith Brunson, widow of Archibald Linley Fripp.
White House Biography: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/mb8.html
Only about 5 feet, 6 inches tall, but trim and erect, Martin Van Buren dressed fastidiously. His impeccable appearance belied his amiability--and his humble background. Of Dutch descent, he was born in 1782, the son of a tavernkeeper and farmer, in Kinderhook, New York.
As a young lawyer he became involved in New York politics. As leader of the "Albany Regency," an effective New York political organization, he shrewdly dispensed public offices and bounty in a fashion calculated to bring votes. Yet he faithfully fulfilled official duties, and in 1821 was elected to the United States Senate.
By 1827 he had emerged as the principal northern leader for Andrew Jackson. President Jackson rewarded Van Buren by appointing him Secretary of State. As the Cabinet Members appointed at John C. Calhoun's recommendation began to demonstrate only secondary loyalty to Jackson, Van Buren emerged as the President's most trusted adviser. Jackson referred to him as, "a true man with no guile."
The rift in the Cabinet became serious because of Jackson's differences with Calhoun, a Presidential aspirant. Van Buren suggested a way out of an eventual impasse: he and Secretary of War Eaton resigned, so that Calhoun men would also resign. Jackson appointed a new Cabinet, and sought again to reward Van Buren by appointing him Minister to Great Britain. Vice President Calhoun, as President of the Senate, cast the deciding vote against the appointment--and made a martyr of Van Buren.
The "Little Magician" was elected Vice President on the Jacksonian ticket in 1832, and won the Presidency in 1836.Van Buren devoted his Inaugural Address to a discourse upon the American experiment as an example to the rest of the world. The country was prosperous, but less than three months later the panic of 1837 punctured the prosperity.
Basically the trouble was the 19th-century cyclical economy of "boom and bust," which was following its regular pattern, but Jackson's financial measures contributed to the crash. His destruction of the Second Bank of the United States had removed restrictions upon the inflationary practices of some state banks; wild speculation in lands, based on easy bank credit, had swept the West. To end this speculation, Jackson in 1836 had issued a Specie Circular requiring that lands be purchased with hard money--gold or silver.
In 1837 the panic began. Hundreds of banks and businesses failed. Thousands lost their lands. For about five years the United States was wracked by the worst depression thus far in its history.
Programs applied decades later to alleviate economic crisis eluded both Van Buren and his opponents. Van Buren's remedy--continuing Jackson's deflationary policies--only deepened and prolonged the depression.Declaring that the panic was due to recklessness in business and overexpansion of credit, Van Buren devoted himself to maintaining the solvency of the national Government. He opposed not only the creation of a new Bank of the United States but also the placing of Government funds in state banks. He fought for the establishment of an independent treasury system to handle Government transactions. As for Federal aid to internal improvements, he cut off expenditures so completely that the Government even sold the tools it had used on public works.
Inclined more and more to oppose the expansion of slavery, Van Buren blocked the annexation of Texas because it assuredly would add to slave territory--and it might bring war with Mexico.
Defeated by the Whigs in 1840 for reelection, he was an unsuccessful candidate for President on the Free Soil ticket in 1848. He died in 1862.