Of all the first ladies, Harriet Lane Johnston was actually the first.

	Waidner-Spahr Library Harriet Lane, James Buchanan's niece, presided over social gatherings at the White House. She is shown in her Inaugural gown. Click photo for larger image.

The niece of James Buchanan -- Pennsylvania's only president and the only bachelor in the post -- she served as his hostess at the White House when she was in her 20s, from 1857-61. She is also one of the women featured in the Smithsonian Institution's First Ladies exhibit now appearing at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.

And while she was the 17th woman to perform that role, she seems to have been the first who was ever called the "first lady."

The reference appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Monthly in 1860, which called Miss Lane "The Lady of the White House, and by courtesy, the First Lady of the Land," says her biographer, Milton Stern.

Harriet Lane Johnston was much more than a semantic anomaly, however.

Widely admired by politicians of all persuasions, the lively young woman skillfully held sway over social life at the White House at a time when the rest of the nation was falling apart. By the time her uncle left office, the secession that led to the Civil War had already begun.

Later, she turned personal tragedy into a lifetime of charitable works. Her donations established the forerunner of the pediatric training facility at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Her paintings helped form the founding collection of the National Gallery of Art -- the institution later renamed the Smithsonian American Art Museum after Pittsburgher Andrew Mellon's gift established the current National Gallery of Art in 1937.

James Buchanan is the only Pennsylvanian ever elected president. Click photo for larger image.

At the Heinz History Center, a lavish black gown she wore to meet Queen Victoria in the late 1800s is positioned so that it sets off the nearby black pantsuit worn by Hillary Rodham Clinton nearly 100 years later.

Miss Lane never drew the political fire that Ms. Clinton did, but she may have been just as influential, Mr. Stern said.

Letters between uncle and niece show that Mr. Buchanan respected Miss Lane's opinion. "Since he didn't have a wife to confide in," Mr. Stern said, "when he was debating whether to become secretary of state or the minister to the Court of St. James's, he confided in her, and he treated her as an intellectual equal."

Harriet Lane, born in 1830, was adopted by Mr. Buchanan when she was 11, after both her parents had died. She was just 26 when she began her term as White House hostess.

She was not the first nor the last non-spouse to serve as first lady. In the first 100 years of the presidency, shorter life spans meant that presidents often had to ask younger relatives or family friends to serve as their hostesses.

The first non-spouse in the role was Dolley Madison, who carried out occasional First Lady duties for Thomas Jefferson, as well as filling the role for her own husband, James Madison. The last was Mary Arthur McElroy, sister of Chester Arthur, in the 1880s.

The youngest child of Mr. Buchanan's favorite sister, Miss Lane showed her political ambition from the time she was adopted.

She lobbied hard to go and live with her single uncle, who was then a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, rather than her uncle Edward, a minister who had married composer Stephen Foster's sister.

She was a "spirited young girl who knew what she wanted," said Sue Small, site manager at Wheatland, the Buchanan presidential estate in Lancaster County. "She thought her uncle James was a much more interesting person to be with than her uncle the minister."

Mr. Buchanan made sure his niece received a first-rate education, and she later overcame his reluctance and persuaded him to take her along when he served as ambassador to Great Britain in the Franklin Pierce administration.

It was there she learned the social graces that would serve her in such good stead later at the White House. She also became a favorite of Queen Victoria and of her son, the Prince of Wales, who later visited her and President Buchanan in Washington.

When Harriet Lane arrived in the nation's capital, she shed light on what had been a gloomy social scene at the presidential mansion.

Her predecessor, Jane Appleton Pierce, had virtually hidden herself away after a series of family tragedies that appeared to have come straight from a Victorian novel.

Mrs. Pierce never wanted her husband to run for president, and she had actually persuaded him to retire from the U.S. Senate after their 3-day-old son died.

Her second son died a year later, and by the time Franklin Pierce was elected president, only son Benjamin was still living. Then, he was killed in a train derailment just two months before the president's inauguration.

When Miss Lane arrived four years later, she threw open the doors of the White House and reinvigorated the social scene.

She even caused a minor scandal at the inaugural ball by wearing a "European" gown that was much more low-cut than the women of Washington were used to, Mr. Stern wrote.

She presided over social gatherings at a time when Congress was coming to blows over the slavery issue and became a master of making out seating charts so that political enemies would not end up next to each other.

After President Buchanan left office, many of his contemporaries and some later historians blamed his policies for fomenting the Civil War.

Miss Lane remained fiercely loyal to her uncle, though, and fought to rehabilitate his reputation after his death.

During her White House years, she also promoted several social causes. She pushed for improvements in prison and hospital conditions, helped establish an institute for the blind in New York and successfully fought illegal liquor sales on Chippewa Indian reservations.

When her uncle died in 1868, he left her a quarter of his estate. By that time, though, she already had become a wealthy woman by marrying Baltimore banker Henry Johnston at what was then considered the advanced nuptial age of 36.

Then, in the course of three short years, death once again reshaped Harriet Lane's life. Between 1881 and 1884, both her sons died from the effects of rheumatic fever, and her husband died of pneumonia.

She had become a wealthy but lonely widow at the age of 54.

After recuperating from the shock, she sold Wheatland, the presidential mansion, and her home in Baltimore and moved back to Washington, just blocks from the White House.

Two years later, she was invited back to the presidential mansion by Frances Folsom Cleveland, the stunning young wife of Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat to be elected president since James Buchanan.

For the next several years, Harriet Lane Johnston became the grande dame of Washington society. In 1902, at the age of 72, she traveled back to England for the coronation of King Edward VII, who had visited her in the White House as a young man.

She died a year later, on July 3, leaving an estate worth $11 million in today's dollars.

That wasn't the end of her influence.

One of her largest bequests was to establish a monument to her uncle in Washington. She set a 15-year deadline to use the money.

The monument sits today in Meridian Hill Park, at Euclid and 16th Street NW, but it almost never came to be. Several congressmen opposed its placement, arguing that Mr. Buchanan had been a failure as president.

Massachusetts Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge compared Mr. Buchanan to Benedict Arnold and said a statue would honor a president "upon whom rests the shadow of disloyalty in the great office to which he was elected."

Finally, though, Congress passed the authorizing legislation, and Woodrow Wilson signed it into law, six days before the deadline in his niece's will, Mr. Stern wrote.

At the statue's dedication, President Herbert Hoover praised Mr. Buchanan's achievements but also took care to note that as "a bachelor, and engrossed in public and private business, he found time to rear and educate an orphaned niece in a manner that would have done credit to any father.

"It is due to Miss Lane's devoted appreciation of his kindness that this statue has been erected."

It was a fitting tribute to a remarkable woman, Mr. Stern said.

"She had this air about her -- her posture, her voice, the way she carried herself," he said. "She was not reserved, and she was extremely intelligent.

"Today a woman of her stature would probably be a senator or candidate for president."

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Dec. 16, 2006) The art collection of former first lady Harriet Lane Johnston, President James Buchanan's niece, resides in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This story as originally published Dec. 5, 2006 said she had bequeathed the collection to the National Gallery of Art, which is what the museum was called at the time. The name was changed after Pittsburgher Andrew Mellon's gift established the current National Gallery of Art in 1937.

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Dec. 6, 2006) Former first lady Harriet Lane Johnston died July 3, 1903. This story as originally published on Dec. 5, 2006 listed the wrong date.