Grace Coolidge

Grace Coolidge
Coolidge in 1924
First Lady of the United States
In role August 2, 1923 – March 4, 1929
President	Calvin Coolidge
Preceded by	Florence Harding
Succeeded by	Lou Hoover
Second Lady of the United States
In role March 4, 1921 – August 2, 1923
Vice President	Calvin Coolidge
Preceded by	Lois Marshall
Succeeded by	Caro Dawes
First Lady of Massachusetts
In role January 2, 1919 – January 6, 1921
Governor	Calvin Coolidge
Preceded by	Ella McCall
Succeeded by	Mary Cox
Second Lady of Massachusetts
In role January 6, 1916 – January 2, 1919
Lieutenant Governor	Calvin Coolidge
Preceded by	Beatrice Barry (1915)
Succeeded by	Mary Cox
First Lady of Northampton
In role January 3, 1910 – January 1, 1912
Mayor	Calvin Coolidge
Preceded by	Margaret O'Brien
Succeeded by	Catherine Feiker
Personal details
Born	Grace Anna Goodhue (1879-01-03)January 3, 1879 Burlington, Vermont, U.S.
Died	July 8, 1957(1957-07-08) (aged 78) Northampton, Massachusetts, U.S.
Resting place	Plymouth Notch Cemetery
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Calvin Coolidge ​ ​ (m. 1905; died 1933)​
Children	2, including John
Education	University of Vermont
Signature

Grace Anna Coolidge (née Goodhue; January 3, 1879 – July 8, 1957) was the wife of the 30th president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge. She was the first lady of the United States from 1923 to 1929 and the second lady of the United States from 1921 to 1923. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1902 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in teaching and joined the Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech in Northampton, Massachusetts, to teach deaf children to communicate by lip reading, rather than by signing. She met Calvin Coolidge in 1904, and the two were married the following year.

As her husband advanced his political career, Coolidge avoided politics. When Calvin Coolidge was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1919, she remained at home in Northampton with their children. After her husband's election as vice president in 1920, the family moved to Washington, D.C., living at the Willard Hotel. Coolidge did not speak out on political issues of the day, including women's rights. Instead, she dedicated herself to supporting popular causes and organizations, such as the Red Cross and the Visiting Nurse Association. Following the unexpected death of her young teenage son Calvin in 1924 from blood poisoning, she won the sympathy of the country. Unlike previous first ladies, who had withdrawn almost entirely from the public spotlight after personal tragedies, Coolidge resumed her role after a few months.

In 1929, Calvin Coolidge's term as president ended, and the couple retired to Northampton. After her husband's death in 1933, Coolidge continued her work with the deaf and wrote for several magazines. She served on the boards of Mercersburg Academy and the Clarke School. After the start of World War II, Grace joined a local Northampton committee dedicated to helping Jewish refugees from Europe, and loaned her house to WAVES. In 1957, she died of heart disease, and was buried in Plymouth, Vermont, beside her husband and her son.

Early life and education

Childhood

Grace Anna Goodhue was born in Burlington, Vermont, on January 3, 1879, as the only child of Andrew Issachar Goodhue and Lemira Barrett Goodhue. Through her father, she was descended from the Goodhue family descended from the 1635 colonist William Goodhue. Each summer, she joined all of the Goodhues for a family reunion in Hancock, New Hampshire, until 1899 when the last of the Goodhue grandparents died. She also visited her maternal grandfather in the summers where she listened to his stories of the Civil War. Grace was close to her mother as a child, following her where she went and taking up the same household chores like sewing.

Grace's father was an engineer at a mill, and the family rented a house from his employer. Then in the early 1880s, her father built them a new home near the mill at 123 Maple Street. He made the house a luxurious one by installing several desirable features: a bathtub of tin and wood, a furnace that heated the entire home, and electric lights.

When Grace's father was injured in a work accident in 1886, she stayed with their neighbors, the Yale family. Here she bonded with their adult daughter, June Yale. June began teaching at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Massachusetts, and she sometimes brought students to Vermont in the summers, giving Grace the opportunity to help care for them.

Grace's father left the mill after his accident and co-founded a machine shop. He was a Democrat, and with this experience he was appointed by Democratic President Grover Cleveland as a steamboat inspector later in 1886. This brought money and status to the family in their small town. Grace had a deeply religious upbringing, raised on Puritan values and spending most of the family's social outings at church events. The family was Methodist until she was a teenager, when she convinced them to convert to Congregationalism. Andrew built a new home for the family at 312 Maple Street in 1899.

Grace began her education at age five at a local public grade school in Burlington and attended Burlington Public Grammar School. In 1893, she entered Burlington High School. There she studied Latin and French, as well as geology, biology, and chemistry. Grace also received private lessons in piano, speech, and singing. She spoke at her school's commencement in 1897, delivering a speech she titled "Tramp Instinct".

University

Grace enrolled at the University of Vermont in 1897, but she dropped out that November because of an eye condition. She returned to the school in 1898. She was involved with several activities in and out of the university, including dance, skating, tobogganing, sleighing, Bible class, Christian Endeavor, and poetry. Grace participated in theater, appearing in productions of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night, and she joined the glee club where she performed as a contralto. She also tried writing on current events, but a rejection letter when she tried to publish turned her off from the pursuit.

Noticing a lonely-looking woman on campus, Grace befriended Ivah Gale. Gale eventually moved into the Goodhue home where she shared a bedroom with Grace, and the two women were among those who co-founded the university's chapter of Pi Beta Phi, a women's fraternity, and Grace became its regional president. The group held its meetings in Grace's home.

Grace gained a reputation for being likeable and outgoing, and she was courted by several men over the course of her schooling. She would become the first of the first ladies to have earned a four-year undergraduate degree.

From 1902 to 1904, inspired by a childhood friend who had pursued a career teaching deaf children, she studied lip reading at Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech and became a teacher there. The education of deaf children remained her lifelong passion.

Marriage and family

Grace dated several young men during college. One relationship, that with Frank Joyner, was serious enough that marriage seemed inevitable. She ended the relationship in 1903 when she met a young rising attorney, Calvin Coolidge. They first met when Grace walked by Coolidge's house and saw him shaving wearing nothing but a Derby cap and long underwear, which she found humorous. Her laughter prompted Coolidge to notice her and seek her out later on.

Grace's vivacity and charm proved a perfect complement to Coolidge's reserved manner. In the summer of 1905, Coolidge proposed in the form of an ultimatum: "I am going to be married to you." Grace readily consented, but her mother objected and did everything she could to postpone the wedding. Coolidge never reconciled with his mother-in-law, who later insisted that Grace had been largely responsible for Coolidge's political success. On October 4, 1905, Goodhue and Coolidge married in a simple ceremony at her parents' house in Burlington: Coolidge House, which was restored in 1993 by Champlain College*. They honeymooned for a week in Montreal and settled in Northampton, Massachusetts, where they occupied what is now known as the Calvin Coolidge House until 1930.

Calvin Coolidge's political career took off in 1907 when he was elected to the Massachusetts General Court. After his term in the state legislature ended, he served three consecutive one-year terms as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts (1916–1919), and two one-year terms as Governor of Massachusetts (1919–1921). In 1920, he was elected vice president and took office in March 1921. Grace did not maintain much of a public profile.

The Coolidges had two sons, John (1906–2000) and Calvin (1908–1924).

In 1921, as wife of the Vice President of the United States, Grace Coolidge went from her housewife's routine into Washington society and quickly became the most popular woman in the capital.

First Lady

After Harding's death and Calvin Coolidge's succession to the Presidency, Grace planned the new administration's social life as her husband wanted it: unpretentious and dignified.

As First Lady, she was a popular hostess. She was also the first First Lady to speak in sound newsreels. The social highlight of the Coolidge years was the party for Charles Lindbergh following his transatlantic flight in 1927. The Coolidges were a particularly devoted couple, although the president never discussed state matters with her. She did not even know that he had decided not to seek re-election in 1928 until he announced it to the press. She received a gold medal from the National Institute of Social Science. In 1931 she was voted one of America's twelve greatest living women.

The first family was given a raccoon in 1926 as a Thanksgiving gift, and the family raised it as a pet. President Coolidge even gave the animal a collar that was sewn with the words "White House Racoon." After the Coolidges left the White House, the raccoon went to live at a zoo.

Later life and death

Calvin Coolidge summed up his marriage to Grace in his autobiography: "For almost a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces."

For more privacy in Northampton, the Coolidges purchased The Beeches, a large house with spacious grounds. The former president died there after a sudden heart attack on January 5, 1933, at the age of 60. After her husband's death, Grace Coolidge continued her work on behalf of the deaf. She was also active in the Red Cross, civil defense, and scrap drives during World War II. Grace kept her sense of fun and her aversion to publicity until her death on July 8, 1957, at the age of 78. She is buried next to her husband in Plymouth, Vermont.

Legacy

First lady biographer Betty Boyd Caroli said that Grace "epitomized current flapper style" and credited her among the other first ladies of the 1920s whose more public views prepared the role of first lady for the more active Eleanor Roosevelt. Grace kept away from politics throughout her life and is not seen as having influenced Calvin's political positions. She was more likely to speak about religion on the political stage, believing that it was an essential part of American society.

See also

• Rebecca (raccoon), her White House pet

References

• Anthony, Carl Sferrazza (1990). First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents' Wives and Their Power, 1789–1961. William Morrow and Company. ISBN 978-0-688-11272-1.
• Caroli, Betty Boyd (2010). First Ladies: From Martha Washington to Michelle Obama. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-539285-2.
• Ferrell, Robert H. (2008). Grace Coolidge: The People's Lady in Silent Cal's White House. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 9780700615636. LCCN 2007045737.
• Miller, Kristie (1996). "Grace Goodhue Coolidge". In Gould, Lewis L. (ed.). American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy. Garland Publishing. pp. 384–408. ISBN 978-0-8153-1479-0.
• Schneider, Dorothy; Schneider, Carl J. (2010). First Ladies: A Biographical Dictionary (3rd ed.). Facts on File. pp. 211–219. ISBN 978-1-4381-0815-5.

Further reading

• Coolidge, Grace (1992). Wikander, Lawrence E.; Ferrell, Robert H. (eds.). Grace Coolidge: An Autobiography. High Plains Pub. Co. ISBN 1881019012. LCCN 92072825.
• Finneman, Teri (2016). "Grace Coolidge". In Sibley, Katherine A. S. (ed.). A Companion to First Ladies. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 404–422. ISBN 978-1-118-73218-2.
• Ross, Ishbel (1962). Grace Coolidge and Her Era: The Story of a President's Wife. Dodd, Mead. ISBN 978-0-944951-04-0.

External links

• Coolidge Presidential Foundation

• Grace Coolidge: First Lady of Baseball Archived 2017-11-14 at the Wayback Machine
• Wombats and Such: Family Pets of Grace and Calvin Coolidge Archived 2018-02-03 at the Wayback Machine
• Grace Coolidge at Find a Grave
• Grace Coolidge at C-SPAN's First Ladies: Influence & Image