FLORIDE CALHOUN

'Floride Calhoun' (February 15, 1792 – July 25, 1866) was the wife of prominent U.S. politician John C. Calhoun.
She was born Floride Bonneau Colhoun to U.S. Senator John E. Colhoun and Floride Bonneau. She married John C. Calhoun, her first-cousin-once-removed (her father's first cousin) on January 8, 1811. Soon after their marriage, her husband was elected to Congress, leaving his wife in charge of his plantation, "Fort Hill", in Clemson, South Carolina. Within the next eighteen years, she gave birth to ten children, including five sons and five daughters, although three daughters died in infancy.
In 1817, she accompanied her husband to Washington upon his appointment as Secretary of War. Eight years later, She became Second Lady of the United States, with her husband's election as Vice President, serving in that role from 1825 to 1832. During her tenure as Second Lady, she became embroiled in a social scandal involving Peggy Eaton, the wife of Secretary of War John Eaton, in what became known as the Petticoat Affair. Floride had organized a coalition among the wives of Jackson cabinet members against Peggy Eaton, whom Floride discovered had committed adultery with Eaton while still married to her first husband John B. Timberlake. The affair allegedly drove Timberlake to suicide after he discovered the affair. The coalition resulted in the resignation of Jackson's Cabinet, except Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, who was a widower. The social ostracism of Mrs. Eaton by Mrs. Calhoun further damaged already-strained relations between Vice President Calhoun and President Andrew Jackson.
Following her husband's resignation as Vice President and election to the United States Senate, she returned to "Fort Hill", resuming her former status as a plantation mistress. Following the death of her husband in 1850, she sold the plantation to one of her sons and moved to a smaller house in Pendleton, South Carolina, which she dubbed "Mi Casa". Over the next fifteen years, she endured the deaths of six of her seven surviving children. She regained control of the "Fort Hill" plantation upon the death of her sole surviving son in 1865, and died at the plantation the following year, aged 74.

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★ Clemson University Biography