Adelaide Barton Clough

Addie Barton CloughFirst Lady
January 31, 1895 - January 2, 1899

Born: 1850
in Maine

Died: June 19, 1929
in Olympia, Washington

Married April 4, 1867 to David Clough

Biography
Adelaide Barton was born in Maine in 1850 to Ruben Fairfield and Mary Barton. The Bartons moved to Minnesota when Addie was a child and settled in Spencer Brook in Isanti County, near the Cloughs, a large family with fourteen children. Addie taught school in Spencer Brook prior to her 1867 marriage to her childhood friend, David Marston Clough. Their only child, Nina, was born the following year. The family moved to Minneapolis in 1872, where their lumber business and prominence grew. In 1888 Nina Clough married Roland H. Hartley, who worked as bookkeeper in the Clough lumber company and later as a company executive and aide to Gov. Clough.

David Clough became governor in 1895, when Gov. Knute Nelson resigned to become senator. At the conclusion of Gov. Clough's second term the Cloughs were presented with a gift from the staff of the state auditor's office; in the presentation, Mrs. M.V. Gibbons, the official stenographer, addressed Mrs. Clough as follows: "Mr. Flynn [chief clerk] has expressed our opinion of Mr. Clough and the high esteem in which we hold him... [W]e now desire to show that we are mindful of the fact that we even more highly appreciate his senior partner and better half. The success of man is largely attributable to the qualities of his wife."

The Cloughs moved to Everett, Washington in 1900 to enter that state's booming lumber trade. Their son-in-law was elected governor of Washington State in 1925. Addie Clough died in 1929 at age 79 in the Governor's Mansion in Olympia, Washington.