Ann Caroline Coleman (1796-1819)

She began courting future U.S. President James Buchanan in Lancaster in 1818. He was then described as, "a tall, handsome lawyer employed by Molton Rogers," but Ann's very wealthy parents were immediately suspicious of his background and his motives. Ann's father was also well-aware of the issues that had surrounded Buchanan while he was a student at Dickinson College: before graduating, he had been dismissed and then reinstated before again coming under faculty discipline. Despite all of this, Buchanan proposed to Ann in 1819, and she happily accepted. But, as the months passed and his work seemed to take an increasing priority over seeing her, she broke off the engagement after, "an innocent but upsetting incident in which Buchanan tarried at the home of an acquaintance before returning to Ann after a trip to Philadelphia." To improve her spirits, her father suggested she take a trip up to the bright-lights of Philadelphia, where she was found dead from "hysterics" (a polite excuse for suicide, having overdosed on laudanum) just after midnight on December 9, 1819. Buchanan was devastated, and he remains the only U.S. President never to have married, and years later returned to Lancaster, at Wheatland. Ann's sister, Sarah, also took her own life as both her father and her brother, Edward, forbade her from marrying her love, to whom they had both taken a dislike.