Rutherford and Lucy Hayes, 1852. Wikipedia Born: August 28, 1831
Died: June 25, 1889
Married: U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes
Children: eight, five of whom lived to maturity
Lucy Webb Hayes was the First Lady of the United States from March 4, 1877 – March 4, 1881. She and her husband were close friends with Vice President William A. Wheeler of Malone, and she visited Saranac Lake with her daughter and Wheeler in 1878; she caught a fifteen pound trout during the visit.
Sanford C. Hayes of Bloomingdale is said to be a relative of Rutherford Hayes.
Plattsburgh Sentinel, June 7, 1878
-Mrs. Hayes caught a trout in the Upper Saranac Lake, last week, weighing fifteen pounds. It was sent to the President. [U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes]
L. Edward Purcell, Vice Presidents: A Biographical Dictionary, 4th Edition, New York: Facts On File, 2010, p. 187 (Full text)
Lucy Webb Hayes's visit to Malone in the spring of 1878 attested more than anything else to the closeness between Wheeler and the Hayes family. Without her husband, but accompanied by her daughter Fanny, Mrs. Hayes spent three weeks as Wheeler's guest traveling in the Adirondacks and fishing Saranac Lake. Not only did she find the vacation itself invigorating, but Lucy also enjoyed testing her angling skills. She virtually gushed at the prospect of landing some of the huge trout for which Saranac was so renowned.
The trip also gave her a chance to see the home of the man who so frequently visited hers. Wheeler's house reminded her of their own in Fremont, Ohio, perhaps even nicer in some respects, she informed her husband. Wheeler, too, enjoyed Mrs. Hayes's visit:
Scarcely an hour of the day passes that some Adirondack experience is not marshalled up in memory. Would that some friendly, artistic hand could have sketched for our own eyes the post-prandial on Flood-wood Pond. The splendor of a White House reception would pale in the contrast.
Lucy's presence in his Malone home, brief though it was, allowed Wheeler to forget momentarily the lingering sadness occasioned bv his wife's death. Months later he still reminisced about the excursion.
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