White House Historical Association

Jane M. Watt

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"Jane M. Watt," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/350.
Position
Stewardess
Years in President's House
circa 1861 – 1862
Legal Status
Free Person
Gender
Female
Race/Ethnicity
White
Presidency
Abraham Lincoln
Biography
​​​​Jane Masterson Watt was born around 1840 in Washington, D.C.1 Little is known about her early life; however, she was married to John Watt, a gardener at the White House. Though she was nominally a White House stewardess from 1861 to 1862, it is unclear whether she ever actually performed any duties in the White House. One newspaper account lists her as a servant who accompanied First Lady Mary Lincoln to Niagara Falls in August 1861.2 However, in a letter from John Hay to John Nicolay dated April 5, 1862, Hay stated, "There is no Steward. Mrs. Watt has gone off and there is no locum tenens."3 A diary entry by Orville Hickman Browning from March 1862 states, “Watt's wife was now nominally stewardess at a salary of $100 per month, all of which, by private arrangement, went into Mrs. Lincoln's pocket.”4 Though it is likely that she never worked in the White House, it is possible that Jane served as the stewardess for a few months and then left the White House with her husband.5 Jane Watt died in Washington, D.C., on January 26, 1907, and is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery.6
  1. Washington, District of Columbia, U.S., Death Certificates, 1874–1931, death certificate for Jane M. Watt, 26 January 1907, age 67, District of Columbia Archives; digital image, Ancestry.com https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62876/records/7858?tid=&pid=&queryId=49ce0add-2b77-4a53-b405-1f12474b1719&_phsrc=fQN154&_phstart=successSource.
  2. “Mrs. Lincoln,” The Chicago Tribune, September 2, 1861, Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/349163709/?terms=watts&match=1
  3. John Hay, At Lincoln's Side: John Hay's Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings, edited by Michael Burlingame, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000): 20.
  4. Burlingame, At Lincoln's Side, 186
  5. This is the assumption Ruth Painter Randall makes in Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1953): 257.
  6. “Died,” The Evening Star, January 28, 1907. Chronicling America, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1907-01-28/ed-1/seq-5/; Washington, District of Columbia, U.S., Death Certificates, 1874–1931, death certificate for Jane M. Watt, 26 January 1907, age 67, District of Columbia Archives; digital image, Ancestry.com https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62876/records/7858?tid=&pid=&queryId=49ce0add-2b77-4a53-b405-1f12474b1719&_phsrc=fQN154&_phstart=successSource.
Birthplace
Washington, D.C., USA
Mount Olivet Cemetery
Related Worker
John Watt
Gardens, Grounds, and Flower Shop, 1853 – 1861