Ellen Lewis Herndon “Nell” Arthur, the gifted contralto and future wife of President Chester A. Arthur, was born on August 30, 1837, at Culpeper Court House, Virginia. As a girl, she moved with her family to Washington, D.C., where her father, naval officer William Lewis Herndon, helped establish the Naval Observatory. There, Nell’s beautiful contralto voice drew notice, and she sang in the choir of St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square.
Nell Arthur died of pneumonia on January 12, 1880, at age 42—before her husband’s election as vice president and before his unexpected succession to the presidency following James A. Garfield’s death in 1881. She therefore never served as first lady. Arthur remained deeply attached to her memory throughout his presidency: he kept her portrait in the White House and is widely reported to have had fresh flowers placed before it each day.
His most visible tribute stood just across Lafayette Square. Arthur presented St. John’s Episcopal Church with a stained-glass memorial window for Nell, created by Lorin of Chartres, France, the studio then producing windows for the church’s pictorial glazing program. The window used Resurrection imagery, including scenes associated with Christ’s empty tomb. At Arthur’s request, it was installed in the south transept so that, when illuminated from within the church at night, it could be seen from the White House.
The surviving window remains an unusually personal presidential memorial: a public work of sacred art shaped by private grief, placed within sight of the executive mansion where Arthur served without the wife he had expected to join him there.
Image: A historical black-and-white portrait of Ellen Lewis Herndon “Nell” Arthur. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
