First Lady Trivia
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99 free First Lady trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free First lady trivia questions with answers. First lady trivia is really trivia about an office that does not exist. The role has never been codified or defined; every occupant has invented her own version of it, and thirteen women who were not presidential wives have filled it for bachelors and widowers. This quiz covers where the title came from, who first carried it in office, and how the job changed: the woman who saved treasures during the War of 1812, the one who held press conferences and then helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the one who restored the White House itself, and the one who ran for the Senate on her way out. There are records too. The youngest, the first foreign-born, the only one to serve non-consecutively, and the wedding in the Blue Room with 31 guests and no reporters. Every answer is written against a sourced account with the sentence that establishes it attached.
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Q 01What is the first lady's traditional role at the White House?
Hostess of the residence
Hostess of the residence is the tradition, though the role has never been codified or officially defined, and she still figures prominently in the nation's political and social life.
Q 02Which future first lady urged her husband in a 1776 letter to 'remember the ladies'?
Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams wrote it as John Adams worked toward independence, warning that if women were ignored they were 'determined to foment a rebellion'.
Q 03Which first lady's portrait appeared on the US $1 silver certificate in 1886?
Martha Washington
Martha Washington appeared on the 1886 and 1896 notes, though she never heard herself called first lady: the title was not coined until after her death.
Q 04Who, in 1860, became the first woman known to be called 'first lady' while holding the White House role?
Harriet Lane
Harriet Lane ran the White House for her uncle James Buchanan, the only president who never married, and Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper used the phrase for her.
Q 05Which first lady's family adopted Rebecca, a raccoon sent to the White House in 1926 as Thanksgiving dinner?
Grace Coolidge
Grace Coolidge's family kept the raccoon a Mississippi supporter had sent for the table, and that Christmas gave Rebecca an embroidered collar reading 'White House Raccoon'.
Q 06Which first lady took control of her husband's schedule after his 1919 stroke?
Edith Wilson
Edith Wilson screened every paper and visitor, deciding what was important enough to reach the bedridden president; she later called it her 'stewardship'.
Q 07Which newspaper printed the earliest known 'FLOTUS'?
Washington Post
The Washington Post ran it in 1983: Donnie Radcliffe wrote that to their Secret Service shadows the Reagans might be 'Potus' and 'Flotus', but to each other they were still 'Ronnie' and 'Nancy'.
Q 08Which title, already used by governors' husbands, was widely suggested for Bill Clinton during the 2016 campaign?
First Gentleman
First Gentleman was among the suggestions, yet as a former president Bill Clinton could in any case have kept the style 'Mr President'.
Q 09Which first lady is credited with saving a portrait of George Washington before the British burned the White House in 1814?
Dolley Madison
Dolley Madison would not leave until the Gilbert Stuart portrait was safe, ordering its frame broken so the canvas could be carried out of the city.
Q 10Which cause did Lady Bird Johnson pioneer as first lady?
Environmental protection work
Environmental protection work was her signature: she pressed Congress for the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which limited roadside billboards and was nicknamed 'Lady Bird's Bill'.
Q 11Who was the first presidential wife to run for the Senate?
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton won a New York seat in November 2000 and was sworn in as a senator while still first lady, holding both roles until her husband's term ended that January.
Q 12Which first lady broke precedent in the late 1970s by sitting in on Cabinet meetings?
Rosalynn Carter
Rosalynn Carter sat in to hear policy first-hand, and in 1977 she toured Latin America and the Caribbean to discuss defence and trade with their leaders on her husband's behalf.
Q 13After the 1981 attempt on Ronald Reagan's life, which kind of adviser did Nancy Reagan consult about his schedule?
An astrologer
Q 21Which Broadway musical did Jacqueline Kennedy invoke in a 1963 Life interview to describe her husband's presidency?
Camelot
Camelot gave her the image: a week after the assassination she quoted its closing lines about 'one brief shining moment' to the writer Theodore H. White.
Q 22Which anti-drug slogan did Nancy Reagan make her signature campaign as first lady?
Just Say No
Just Say No caught on after her visit to a California school, and children's clubs across the country soon took the phrase as their name.
Q 23What was Nancy Reagan criticised for early in her husband's first term?
New china and free designer clothes
An astrologer advised her on which days were safe for the president's travel and appearances, a secret that his former chief of staff Donald Regan revealed in a 1988 memoir.
Q 14Which former first lady co-founded a California addiction treatment centre in 1982 after her own recovery?
Betty Ford
Betty Ford entered treatment in 1978 after her family staged an intervention, then raised the money for the Betty Ford Center and chaired its board until 2005.
Q 15What was Eleanor Roosevelt the first presidential spouse to do?
Hold regular press conferences
Hold regular press conferences is what she did from 1933, and because she admitted only women reporters, wire services that had never employed women had to hire some.
Q 16Which international document did Eleanor Roosevelt oversee the drafting of?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights came from the UN commission she chaired, and she told the General Assembly it might become 'the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere'.
Q 17What made Eleanor Roosevelt a controversial first lady in her own time?
Her outspokenness on civil rights
Her outspokenness on civil rights went beyond words: in 1939 she resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution after it barred singer Marian Anderson from Constitution Hall.
Q 18What did Jacqueline Kennedy lead at the White House?
Its restoration as a historic site
Its restoration as a historic site was privately funded: she set up the White House Historical Association, which raised the money by selling a guidebook she had conceived.
Q 19After a junior year in Paris, which subject did Jacqueline Kennedy take her degree in at George Washington University?
French literature
French literature was her 1951 degree; her first job then sent her around Washington as a newspaper's 'Inquiring Camera Girl', photographing strangers and asking each a question.
Q 20What career did Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis take up in New York after 1975?
Book editor
Book editor was her last career, first at Viking Press and then at Doubleday, where she persuaded Michael Jackson to write his memoir Moonwalk and wrote its foreword herself.
New china and free designer clothes jarred with the 1981 recession, although the china was bought entirely with private donations and not public money.
Q 24Which volunteer programme did Nancy Reagan champion in her 1982 book To Love a Child?
Foster Grandparents
Foster Grandparents pairs older volunteers with children who have special needs; she saw it work in California and promoted it across the state and then the nation.
Q 25Which two universities did Michelle Obama attend?
Princeton and Harvard Law
Princeton and Harvard Law it was: she followed her older brother Craig, a basketball star there, to Princeton, then took her law degree at Harvard in 1988.
Q 26Where did Michelle Obama meet her future husband?
At the firm Sidley Austin
At the firm Sidley Austin she was already an attorney when Barack Obama arrived as a summer associate in 1989; they married three years later.
Q 27What was Michelle Obama's undergraduate major?
Sociology
Sociology was her major, and for her senior thesis she sent a questionnaire to Black graduates of her university about their ties to the Black community.
Q 28Who was the first foreign-born first lady?
Louisa Adams
Louisa Adams was born in London to an American merchant and an English mother, and she first saw the United States only some years after marrying John Quincy Adams.
Q 29First lady Lucy Hayes is remembered by a nickname pairing her name with which drink, after alcohol left the White House?
Lemonade
Lemonade Lucy is the nickname, though it apparently caught on only after she left the White House, and the ban on alcohol was her husband's decision.
Q 30Which trees did first lady Helen Taft help bring to Washington's Tidal Basin, planting the first herself in 1912?
Cherry trees
Cherry trees came as a gift from Tokyo, but the first shipment in 1910 arrived infested and had to be burned, so Japan sent replacements.