Sharon Williams Leahy

Sharon Williams Leahy is an independent scholar and historian whose research focuses on American first ladies, material culture, and architectural history. She holds an M.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design, where her thesis—“The Architectural Inheritance of the Burned Over District”—explored historic design traditions in upstate New York. She earned her B.L.A. in Landscape Architecture from Louisiana State University.

Leahy is co-author, with Christopher J. Leahy, of Presidentess: The Life of First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler (University Press of Kansas, 2026). Her work has appeared in Southern First Ladies: Culture and Place in White House History, A Companion to the First Ladies, and New York History: A Quarterly Journal. Her 2018 article, “Not a Model: First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler and New York City’s Print Culture,” helped redefine how scholars view the intersection of gender, politics, and media in nineteenth-century America.

A frequent media contributor, Sharon has appeared on C-SPAN, participated in the George W. Bush Institute’s podcast series The Controversies of Julia Gardiner Tyler, and was featured in East Wing Magazine. She also serves as a consultant on historic preservation projects across New York and Pennsylvania, preparing National Register nominations and historic property reports that preserve and interpret America’s architectural heritage