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Six Historic Gardens

Historic gardens have a special appeal to New Englanders if only because of our harsh winters and long dreary springs.

Though they offer the visitor serenity and relaxation, preserving historic gardens usually involves a great deal of hard work and commitment. Stewardship of historic gardens also requires knowledge of horticulture, garden design, landscape design, history and often architecture and architectural history.

Here, then, are six historic gardens, one in each New England state.

Elizabeth Park

The historic gardens at Hartford’s Elizabeth Park

Elizabeth Park in Hartford is the oldest municipal rose garden in the United States with 800 rose varieties.

Charles M. Pond, who financed the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, bequeathed his estate to Hartford — but only if the city named it after his late wife. In 1897, Hartford took possession of the 102-acre site.

Park superintendent Theodore Wirth created the 2.5-acre Rose Garden in 1904. The city decided it couldn’t afford the historic garden in the 1970s, so a group of volunteers rescued it.

Today, the park includes the historic gardens, pathways, century-old Lord and Burnham greenhouses, lawns, tennis courts, bowling greens, a picnic grove and a pond. Ironically, the border between Hartford and West Hartford moved, so Hartford’s largest park now sits mostly in the neighboring town.

1561 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford, Conn.

Asticou Azalea Garden

Asticou Azalea Garden, one of two historic gardens that came from Reef Point

Think of a Japanese stroll garden in coastal Maine and you’ve pretty much imagined the Asticou Azalea Garden. Though it started in 1957, the garden has a much longer history. It began as Reef Point, a Bar Harbor estate owned by Mary Cadwalder Rawle and Frederic Rhinelander Jones, Edith Wharton’s brother. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were also parents of landscape architect Beatrix Farrand.

Farrand inherited the property in 1935, and she and her husband Max decided to turn Reef Point into a horticultural study center. The venture was less successful than the Farrands hoped, and Bar Harbor refused to grant them a tax exemption after the Maine fires of 1947.

Farrand then broke up her gardens, selling many of her plants to Charles Savage. He moved most of them to Thuya Garden, an English flower garden, but he thought the azaleas would do better next to a pond in Northeast Harbor. And so he created the Asticou Azalea Garden, which features cherry trees that bloom in spring, azaleas and rhododendrons in June, Iris in July, water lilies in August and fall colors in September and October.

Savage designed the historic gardens to inspire feelings of serenity, something you’ll need if you visit nearby Acadia National Park in the summer.

3 Sound Drive, Northeast Harbor, Maine

Arnold Arboretum

Arnold Arboretum includes some of the oldest historic gardens

The Arnold Arboretum certainly counts as historic, as it started in 1872 because of a bequest from a whaling captain named James Arnold. But is an arboretum a garden? Well, yes. The Arnold Arboretum includes an herbarium, the wildflower-filled Cosmopolitan Meadow and the Explorers Garden, with plants from the North America-China Plant Exploration Consortium of the early 1900s.

The arboretum began when Arnold bequeathed part of his estate to Harvard, which added it to another country estate given to the college by Benjamin Bussey. In 1872, Harvard named botany professor Charles Sprague Sargent as arboretum director. Sargent worked with Frederick Law Olmsted to design the roads, pathways and gardens.

Harvard gave the Boston the arboretum in 1882, when it joined the city’s Emerald Necklace park system. The college got a 1,000-year lease and the responsibility for running the historic garden, now 281 acres.

The arboretum includes about 15,000 plants, including tiny trees in the Larz Anderson Collection of Japanese Dwarfed Trees, originally imported by Larz Anderson in 1913.

125 Arborway, Boston, Mass.

Prescott Park

Portsmouth’s Prescott Park

Prescott Park provides a waterfront oasis for pedestrians strolling through the historic city of Portsmouth, N.H. Two sisters, Mary and Josie Prescott, inherited a fortune from their brother Charles in 1932. They decided to use the money to replace a seedy, industrial section of town with a public park.

The sisters began to systematically buy up land along the Piscataqua River, deeding the land to Portsmouth in 1940. They also set up a trust to maintain the 10-acre park in 1949.

Today, the University of New Hampshire donates plant material for the park’s flower beds, but the city maintains them. The park, popular among artists and wedding planners, features lawns, gardens, brick walkways, boardwalk piers, public docks, and an island for picknicking. The park stays open year-round, and in summer hosts outdoor Broadway musicals.

1 Water Street, Portsmouth, N.H.

Green Animals

The Green Animals topiary garden in Portsmouth, R.I., dates to 1859, when the Victorian mansion was built on a 7-acre estate overlooking Narragansett Bay.

Thomas E. Brayton, treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Fall River, Mass., bought the property in 1872. He hired Joseph Carreiro as superintendent of the property in 1905, and Carreiro began to train topiaries. Carreiro also planted and maintained fruit trees, perennial beds, herb and vegetable gardens.

Later joined by his son-in-law, Carreiro created more than 80 topiaries, including a horse and rider, a unicorn, a giraffe, an ostrich, an elephant and two bears.

In the 1940s, the estate hosted a coming-out party for Jacqueline Bouvier and later a reception for First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. In 1972, Brayton’s daughter Alice left the estate to The Preservation Society of Newport County upon her death.

Today, Green Animals is the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States. It opens seasonally and includes formal flowerbeds, geometric pathways, rose and grape arbors and fruit trees in addition to the topiaries.

380 Cory’s Lane, Portsmouth, R.I.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller

The formal Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Garden

The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park was the boyhood home of George Perkins Marsh, a founder of both the environmental movement and the Smithsonian Institute. Frederick Billings, the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, bought the property. He managed it according to the principles of land conservation put forth by George Perkins Marsh.

Mary and Laurance Rockefeller later bought the property in 1954. A series of prominent landscape architects, including Ellen Shipman and Robert Morris Copeland, created and altered the extensive gardens. Today they include an azalea and rhododendron garden, rock garden, cutting garden, a hemlock hedgerow and a stand of Norway spruce,

The property became a national historic park in 1992, its purpose to interpret the history and evolution of conservation stewardship in America. It is open from Memorial Day through October.

54 Elm St, Woodstock, Vt.

Images: Arnold Arboretum By Daderot at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18516058; Asticou Azalea Gardens By Dudesleeper – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17126170; Prescott Park By Bostonian13 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27655804; Green Animals By Brian Feathers, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58062721. This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Presidential Houses in New England

Before presidential libraries, there were presidential houses, and every New England state has at least one.

Massachusetts, of course, was the birthplace of the most presidents: the two Adamses, John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush. You could almost count Calvin Coolidge, as he lived in Northampton for years, and even George Washington spent nearly a year in Cambridge as commander in chief of the colonial military.

Coolidge, though, was born in Vermont, and New Hampshire gave us Franklin Pierce. No president came from Rhode Island, though Dwight Eisenhower spent considerable time in Newport. And if it weren’t for the Bushes, Connecticut and Maine would have little claim to presidential roots.

So in celebration of President’s Day, we bring you six presidential houses. If you know of another, please mention it in the comments section.

37 Hillhouse Ave.

37 Hillhouse Ave., where President George W. Bush lived for two years.

The housing shortage after World War II forced Yale University to convert an Italianate mansion into housing for married student veterans. George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara lived there while he studied at Yale and they started their family. George W. Bush lived there until he was two, and then the family moved to Texas.

The elder president had left Yale as a sophomore to serve in the Navy. Of his living conditions, he wrote, “Not to make too much of the postwar housing shortage, but there were a dozen other veterans’ families sharing the house with us — each with one child, except for Bill and Sally Reeder, who had twins. That made 40 in all.”

It couldn’t have been that much of a hardship. Both Mark Twain and Charles Dickens described Hillhouse Avenue as ‘the most beautiful street in America.’

Today, Yale uses the building for its Economics Department.

Walker Point

The main house of the Bush compound at Walker Point.

Americans grew familiar with the Bush compound during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, who held news conferences while staying there. His son, George W. Bush, also stayed at the home during his presidency. So did a half dozen world leaders — and George H.W. Bush’s political opponent, former president Bill Clinton.

The Bush family has used the Walker Point estate since the days of George H.W. Bush’s great-grandparents.

Walker Point juts out into the Atlantic Ocean in Kennebunkport, Maine, and includes a large Shingle Style house, eight other residences, tennis courts, a dock and a sports field. Though the Bushes still own it, tourists enjoy the scenic drive along Ocean Avenue, where they can glimpse the property.

Peacefield

One of many presidential houses in Massachusetts, both Adams lived at Peacefield in Quincy.

Massachusetts has produced more presidents than any other New England state and can claim the most presidential houses: John and John Quincy Adams, who lived at Peacedale in Quincy. John F. Kennedy, of course, was born in Brookline, summered in Hyannis Port and lived in Boston. George H.W. Bush was born in Milton, but his family soon moved to Greenwich, Conn.

Massachusetts also has quite a presidential houses known as summer White Houses. Calvin Coolidge, who lived the greater part of his life in Northampton, spent a summer in Swampscott. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama summered on Martha’s Vineyard. Less well-known summer visitors include Franklin Pierce, who spent time in Andover, Mass., and Grover Cleveland, who vacationed in Marion and Bourne on the South Shore. Cleveland’s summer home in Bourne, Gray Gables, was torn down but rebuilt to resemble the original.

William Howard Taft summered twice in Beverly until his hostess floated her house to Marblehead to discourage him. (She didn’t like the crowds he attracted.)

We won’t even count the presidents who lived in Massachusetts while attending Harvard. Okay, we will: the Adamses, Kennedy, Obama, both Roosevelts and Rutherford B. Hayes.

But since two presidents lived most of their lives in Quincy, we chose Peacefield, the Adams Family homestead. Built by a Loyalist in 1731 and abandoned during the American Revolution, John and Abigail bought the house in 1787. They lived in London at the time, and found the house disappointing when they returned. Abigail said it looked like ‘a wren’s nest.’ But she spent years renovating and expanding it while John attended to his political duties.

John Quincy Adams also lived at Peacefield, as did his son, the statesman Charles Francis Adams and his grandson, historian Henry Adams.

Peacefield today belongs to the U.S. government as the Adams National Historical Park. It comprises 11 buildings, including the birthplaces of John and John Quincy Adams.

For more information, click here.

Franklin Pierce Homestead

The Pierce Homestead, one of two presidential houses in New Hampshire where Franklin Pierce lived.

Franklin Pierce grew up in the gracious home his father built after serving in the American Revolution. He may even have been born there in 1804, the year his father built the house.

Benjamin Pierce had bought 200 acres in Hillsborough, N.H., after the new state turnpike opened nearby. Benjamin Pierce ran a tavern, and on Christmas Eve in 1824 hosted a dinner for 21 Revolutionary War veterans. Franklin probably attended — or helped serve — the dinner. Benjamin Pierce later served two terms as New Hampshire’s governor.

Franklin lived in the family home until for 23 years until 1834, when he married. He had spent seven years away at school, college and law study in Portsmouth.

His wife, Jane Appleton, didn’t like Hillsborough, and they moved to Concord. Benjamin Pierce died in 1839 and left the house to his son-in-law. Franklin’s sister, Elizabeth, married John McNeil, Jr., a general in the War of 1812.

After his disappointing single term as president, Franklin Pierce briefly returned to his childhood home in Hillsborough.

New Hampshire actually has two Franklin Pierce presidential houses: the one in Hillsborough, and the Pierce Manse in Concord, also a house museum. For more information, click here.

Eisenhower House

Eisenhower House, one of Rhode Island’s presidential houses.

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife Mamie summered in Newport, R.I., during his presidency in 1958 and 1960. At first in 1958 he stayed at the Naval War College on Coasters Harbor Island, but he wanted to be closer to the golf course at the Newport Country Club. He moved to a mansion at Fort Adams.

Now called Eisenhower House, it was built in 1873 for Gen. Henry Jackson Hunt, a Civil War artillery officer. The house has stunning views of Narragansett Bay and Newport Harbor.

Another of Rhode Island’s presidential houses, Hammersmith Farm, was the site of John F. Kennedy’s marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier. As president, Kennedy occasionally visited the farm, still in private hands.

Eisenhower House is now part of Fort Adams State Park and available for weddings and social events. For more information click here.

Plymouth Notch, Vt.

Birthplace of Calvin Coolidge, one of several presidential houses in Plymouth Notch.

Calvin Coolidge’s birthplace is such a throwback to the way Vermont used to be that some people call it “Vermont’s Brigadoon.” Coolidge cannily used it as a backdrop to hone his image as a thrifty Yankee.

Coolidge was actually sworn in as president of the United States while vacationing at his boyhood home in Plymouth Notch, Vt.

His father, a notary, swore him in at 2:47 a.m. on Aug. 3, 1923, hours after President Warren G. Harding died.

Coolidge often visited his family home, a modest white frame farmhouse in the classic New England style of big house, little house, back house, barn.

The Secret Service detail assigned to him slept in tents on the property and a dance hall nearby served as his office in the summer of 1924.

Today Coolidge’s birthplace and surrounding buildings comprise the Calvin Coolidge Homestead District, which includes the Cilley General Store, the Post Office, the Wilder Restaurant (serving lunch), the church, several barns, the dance hall and the Plymouth Cheese factory. For more information click here.

Click on the image to buy the ebook from Amazon. Paperback version now available.

If you really want to know what a president and first lady were like, find out what they ate. The New England Historical Society’s new book, Eat Like a President, tells you about the six New England presidents, their servants, their families, their friends and how they struggled to make the White House presentable for public entertainment. Click here to buy the ebook; here for the paperback.

Images: Graves-Gilman House By Eumenes12 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5447836. Walker Point, By Zollernalb – own work, eigene Arbeit, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2730841. Franklin Pierce Homestead By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20697770. Plymouth Notch By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34788716. Peacefield by By Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3162095.

This story about presidential houses was updated in 2023.

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The Largest Historic District in Each New England State

Identifying the largest historic districts in New England was no easy task because, let’s face it, we’re dripping with history. You can barely throw a rock in New England without hitting a historic building, landscape, cemetery, lighthouse or waterfront.

Since we decided to do it by state, we found Rhode Island especially challenging because of Providence and Newport. Both cities have extensive collections of historic buildings. We opted for Ocean Drive in Newport, as it contains 1,509 acres.

So if you have a yen for taking in a lot of history some weekend day, these might fit the bill.

Wethersfield Historic District

six largest historic districts wethersfield

Wethersfield Historic District

English settlers from Massachusetts founded Wethersfield in 1634, making it the first European settlement in Connecticut. The historic district, tucked between Hartford and Rocky Hill, covers 1,300 acres. It contains 1,200 buildings with about 100 dating to colonial times.

The town itself evolved from a struggling early colonial outpost. It then emerged as a transportation hub and contributed many soldiers to the American Revolution. Then eventually it rose to prominence as home to the Wethersfield onion.

Work on officially protecting the historic district began in 1962. In 1970, the National Park Service placed it on the National Register of Historic Places. The district has many residents and businesses, making for a lively ambience. Most famously it also contains the Silas Deane House (1766), the Joseph Webb House (1752); and the Isaac Stevens house (1790). They belong to the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum. open to the public. So is the Town Green, which stretches nearly a half mile.

Joseph Webb and Isaac Stevens houses

Colonial and Federal style houses surround the green, and many retain their original character. They offer excellent examples of the carpentry used by skilled builders who mostly worked as shipbuilders.

Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village

Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village

Maine, the largest state in New England, naturally has several large historic districts. The Schoodic Historic District in Acadia National Park takes in more than 1,000 acres of raw natural seascapes. The Castine Historic District, with its rich colonial history, takes up about 1,800 acres on the southern end of the Bagaduce Peninsula. Meanwhile, the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, near Poland and New Gloucester, sits on somewhere between 1,700 and 1,900 acres of land.

Founded between 1782 and 1784, the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village was a settlement of Shakers – a religious group that grew out of the Quaker, Methodist and Camisard sects of Protestantism.

Shakers lived communally, worked hard and practiced celibacy. That ultimately spelled the dwindling of the Shakers. Sabbathday Lake was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Despite the shrinking population of Shakers, Sabbathday Lake remains a working Shaker Village. It has 18 buildings, and six are open to the public. The museum welcomes summer visitors to view Shaker crafts and learn about the history of the group. Tours of the village are offered Monday through Saturday throughout the summer. The village is closed on Sunday, though the public may attend a weekly religious service.

Nantucket Island

The Oldest House

All 30,000 acres of Nantucket belong to the National Historic Landmark District. The island is considered the finest surviving example of a late 18th-century New England seaport town. America’s whaling industry started on Nantucket in the late 17th century, as the colonists imitated the original Native American whalers.

The Old Mill

By 1774, 250 American ships engaged in whaling; 150 of them came from Nantucket. But then whaling declined. Shifting sandbars also prevented ships from entering Nantucket Harbor, and a fire in 1846 destroyed the business section.

Historic preservation didn’t begin on the island until 1897. Then someone donated a windmill built in 1746 was donated to the Nantucket Historical Association. Eight hundred structures built before the Civil War survive, including Sankaty Light, built in 1850.

Another historic property, the Jethro Coffin House, dates to 1686. But as Nantucket prospered, residents built larger houses in the Federal and Greek Revival styles. Orange and Main streets offer the best examples of those grand old homes.

R.H. Macy ran a dry goods store on Main and Fair streets, today commemorated by a plaque. Nearby is the Pacific National Bank, where on the roof Maria Mitchell discovered a comet.

The island’s fortunes changed with the arrival of wealthy summer visitors. Some put the island on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s most endangered list in 2000. That’s because they tore down houses, gutted rehabs and built too-large homes on inappropriate sites.

Amherst Village District

Amherst, N.H., was named for Lord Jeffery Amherst, commander of all British forces in North America. The town then became the first Hillsborough County seat in 1769, but county government moved to either Nashua or Manchester. That left the central village barely touched by change, and today it’s one of the prettiest places in New England.

In Amherst, Horace Greeley was born, Franklin Pierce got married and Daniel Webster argued cases.

Today the Amherst Historic District comprises more than 1600 acres and 120 buildings. They come in Federal, Georgian and Greek Revival styles. They’re clustered around the Village Green. There the town holds a large old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration. In winter, there’s a Christmas tree lighting and, throughout the summer, band concerts.

Ocean Drive Historic District

The view from Ocean Drive

The Ocean Drive Historic District developed when the new grand mansions on Bellevue Avenue pushed development south. Ocean Drive begins near Bellevue Avenue, follows the shoreline to Brenton Point State Park and then ends just south of Fort Adams.

The roadway winds through rolling green hills, rocky cliffs, pastures and summer houses. Those include early 18th-century farms and Eidlitz’s Swiss Chalet of 1854. Frederick Law Olmsted designed some of the landscape.

The homes are much more private than on Bellevue Avenue. But they include some architectural gems: the neoclassical Beacon Rock estate by McKim, Mead and White. There’s also a stunning French chateaux by Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson and Bonniecrest and a Tudor English mansion converted to condos. Hammersmith Farm, where Sen. John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier, is also along Ocean Drive.

Commercial buildings are generally the clubhouses of private beaches. Gooseberry Beach is private but open to the public.

Montpelier Historic District

State Street, Montpelier Historic District

Montpelier, Vt., has the largest historic district in Vermont listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city, Vermont’s state capital, grew up around government, But it also got help from industry powered by water from the Winooski River and its North Branch.

Montpelier has Federal style mansions and Greek Revival homes that survived the town’s economic boom after the Civil War. In fact, the historic district has 563 main properties along with bridges, dams and cemeteries. The city also has vibrant neighborhoods and busy downtown and business districts. It proves history doesn’t have to be boring. (We never thought so, though.)

Vermont Statehouse

The district has five churches designed by architects between 1865 and 1874. It also includes Italianate mansions and brick commercial buildings built after two fires in 1875. From the 19th and 20th centuries, the district has elaborate French Second Empire and Queen Anne homes as well as buildings deemed historically important. The Greek Revival Statehouse was carefully restored in the 1980s.

The Vermont History Museum, next to the Statehouse, has maps of the historic district.

Images: Sabbathday Lake By Jamie Ribisi-Braley – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35399926. Montpelier By AlexiusHoratius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23102071. Vermont Statehouse By Jonathanking – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21731245. Amherst Civil War monument By Smuttynoser at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10372554. And Ocean Drive, By Daniel Case – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3966356.

This story about the largest historic districts updated in 2023.

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Was Jackie Kennedy the 1st Black First Lady?

When First Lady Jackie Kennedy visited England in 1961, society photographer Cecil Beaton met her at a dinner party. In his journal he commented she had a ‘Negroid’ appearance.

The first black First Lady? Jacqueline Kennedy. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

Beaton detected what some claim is Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s African heritage. That would make her the first black First Lady — at least under the “one-drop rule” — well before Michelle Obama moved into the White House.

Jackie was related to the van Salee family, according to the New York Genealogical and Historical Society. Anthony and Abraham van Salee were among the first settlers of New Amsterdam, renamed New York in 1664. Their father was Jan Janszoon, a Dutch pirate who converted to Islam and went native in North Africa. Historians believe he fathered Anthony and Abraham with a mistress of mixed race.

Anthony van Salee came to New Amsterdam at 22 – perhaps the first Muslim in the New World. He then found success as a prominent landholder and merchant.

Anthony consequently defended minorities. Contemporaries described him as ‘tawny,’ ‘half-Moroccan,’ ‘a former black slave’ and ‘mulatto.’

One of the van Salee descendants, John Van Salee De Grasse, received a formal education as a doctor. He then joined the Medical Society of Massachusetts and served as surgeon for the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.

How, exactly, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was related to Anthony or Abraham van Salee is unclear, at least to the New England Historical Society. (Perhaps a genealogist can help us out.)

Under the ‘one drop’ racial code, all she needed was one distant ancestor from sub-Saharan Africa to be considered black. The code, first enacted as law in Tennessee in 1910, decreed that a person with one drop of black blood was to be considered black.

Jackie’s father, John Vernou Bouvier, had such a swarthy complexion that people called him ‘Black Jack.’ Jackie’s classmates at Miss Porter’s School asked her if he was really white.

1st Black First Lady?

Jackie Kennedy took on the First Lady role when African-Americans agitated for equality under the law.

President Kennedy supported (though somewhat tepidly) anti-discrimination laws. And so the New York Genealogical and Historical Society approached Jackie Kennedy hoping to discuss her African ancestry. Perhaps, they thought, it could help get a Civil Rights bill passed.

But Jackie Kennedy described her van Salee ancestors as ‘Jewish.’

She wouldn’t be the first person with African blood to inhabit the White House. The van Salee descendants also included President Warren G. Harding, as well as the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys and Humphrey Bogart.

President Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, a mixed-race woman who he enslaved.

And since nearly 4 percent of European-Americans have African ancestors, the United States probably had more than one black First Lady.

Beaton, by the way, did not limit his catty remarks to Jackie Kennedy. He described Audrey Hepburn as looking ‘Mongolian’ with a huge mouth.

Here’s his complete description of the first black First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

Huge, baseball-player’s shoulders and haunches, big boyish hands and feet; very dark, beautiful receptive eyes looking roguish or sad — sometimes they pop too much — mouth very large and generous, with a smile turning down at the corners in an inverted laugh; a somewhat negroid appearance; the suspicion of a moustache, and very black hair.

Click on the image to buy the ebook from Amazon. Paperback version now available.

Find out what happened when Jackie did the Twist at the White House — and get her daiquiri recipe too — in Eat Like a President.

You might also enjoy this story about Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s wedding here. This story about the first black first lady was updated in 2023.

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The Night Ethel Kennedy Met Jackie Bouvier

Ethel Kennedy loved to be the center of attention, but she couldn’t compete with her sister-in-law, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

Ethel was outdoorsy and fun, devoted to her husband Robert F. Kennedy and eventually mother to 11 rambunctious children.

Jackie was something else, and their relationship was sometimes strained. Ethel called Jackie ‘the Debutante.’ Jackie called Ethel ‘a baby-making machine – wind her up and she gets pregnant.’

Ethel Kennedy

She was born April 11, 1928, in Chicago, the sixth of seven children of George and Anne Skakel. Her father was a self-made millionaire, her mother came from a poor South Side Irish Catholic family.

The Skakels moved east when Ethel turned five in 1933, finally settling in a 31-room mansion in Greenwich, Conn., in 1936. The rowdy Irish brood never quite fit in with the WASPy snobs of Greenwich.

Ethel shared her mother’s devotion to Catholicism. An indifferent student, she excelled at sports. She attended Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, where she became friends with Jean Kennedy, the second-youngest of Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s nine children. Ethel Skakel met Bobby Kennedy on a ski weekend with Jean, and they married in June 1950.

St. Patrick’s Day

When Jack and Jackie were dating. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Library.

As they approached their third wedding anniversary, Bobby, a newly minted lawyer, worked for the federal government in Washington, D.C. Bobby’s older brother, John F. Kennedy, had just won election to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.

Ethel Kennedy had already given birth to two children, but that didn’t stop her from throwing parties. She would later be known for wild affairs in which guests in evening clothes were thrown into the swimming pool.

Ethel Kennedy decided to hold a St. Patrick’s Day party in 1953 and invited Bobby’s older brother. Jack Kennedy asked if he could bring his new girlfriend, Jacqueline Bouvier. Ethel called Jackie and told her the same thing she told all her guests: Wear black.

Most of the guests drove or took a cab to the party, and they all dutifully wore black. Jack Kennedy arrived on crutches. Jackie showed up last — in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. Underneath her black fur she wore a black evening gown embroidered with silver thread, a pearl necklace and earrings.

Ethel suddenly appeared, wearing a shimmering emerald gown that assured she’d capture everyone’s attention. Except when people were looking at Jackie Bouvier.

Jackie held court by the fireplace, then excused herself with ‘a dreadful headache.’ She made it a point, though, to say goodbye to each dazzled guest before leaving in her chauffeured car.

Postscript

During the White House years, Ethel Kennedy sometimes filled in when Jackie couldn’t – or wouldn’t – fulfill a social commitment. Once Jackie begged off a ‘meet-and-greet’ with White House visitors, and Ethel hosted the event instead. Jackie went off to play tennis. Her press secretary lied through her teeth to Ethel, saying Jackie wasn’t feeling well.

During the Kennedy presidency, Ethel’s madcap parties at her home in McLean, Va., made news. She would let loose a live chicken on the dining room table or push presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., into the swimming pool. Jack and Jackie Kennedy rarely went to Ethel’s parties.

Bobby Kennedy, Eunice Shriver, Caroline Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, John Kennedy

After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Bobby Kennedy consoled Jackie – to such an extent many believed they were carrying on a romance.

Ethel Kennedy may have thought so too. Her sister-in-law, Eunice Shriver, was quoted as saying to her, “Well, what are you going to do about it — Bobby’s spending an awful lot of time with the ‘widder.'” Ethel said nothing in response.

After Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, Ethel’s children grew even more unruly. Things got so bad that Jackie wouldn’t let John and Caroline visit or spend time with their cousins.

Click on the image to buy the ebook from Amazon. Paperback version now available.

As First Lady, Jackie danced the Twist and drank daiquiris. Find out more about her and five other first ladies in The New England Historical Society’s Eat Like a President. It has recipes, too.

Available as an ebook and in paperback.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Miss Porter’s Finishes Socialites, Scholars and a First Lady

The educational reformer who founded Miss Porter’s School in 1843 could not have imagined the fame, fortune, scandal and accomplishment her students would achieve.

Sarah Porter was born Aug. 17, 1813, the daughter of a well-to-do Congregationalist minister and his wife in Farmington, Conn. She had the best education available for young ladies at the time. Yale professors tutored her and she learned four languages. When she reached her 80s, she taught herself a fifth: Hebrew.

Sarah Porter

Sarah Porter started Miss Porter’s with 18 students. By the 1880s, Miss Porter’s grew into national prominence with nearly 100 students. The curriculum included Latin, French, German, spelling, reading, arithmetic, trigonometry, history, geography, chemistry, physiology, botany, geology and astronomy.

Miss Porter’s Alumnae

Classical scholar Edith Hamilton graduated from Miss Porter’s. So did her sister Dr. Alice Hamilton, the first woman faculty member of Harvard University Medical School and founder of the field of industrial medicine.

Miss Porter’s School, also known as Porter’s. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Graduates would include the mother, daughter, wife, sister-in-law and mistress of presidents.

Dorothy Walker Bush, the mother of President George H.W. Bush, attended, as did her granddaughter, Dorothy Bush Koch.

President John F. Kennedy had a penchant for Miss Porter’s graduates. He married one, Jacqueline Bouvier, and had an affair with another, Mimi Alford. Alford later wrote a tell-all book, Once Upon A Secret: My Affair With President John F. Kennedy and its Aftermath.

Jacqueline Bouvier’s sister Lee — later Princess Lee Radziwell — also studied at Miss Porter’s.

Jacqueline Bouvier at Miss Porter’s

When Jacqueline Bouvier attended Miss Porter’s, the girls were trained to have exquisite manners, to speak softly and to hold refined conversation. Housekeepers ironed linen napkins three times, but the girls waited on tables so they would know how to host dinners.

Donald Spoto, in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life, described the Miss Porter’s creed:

A girl at Miss Porter’s was expected to rise to the occasion, to put her best foot forward, to do what was right — even in times of crisis — and to display, as the chaplain often said at the nondenominational Sunday services, “guts and gumption.”

Miss Porter’s has always enjoyed a reputation for academic excellence, though some of the heiresses who attended were more interested in café society than calculus.

Below is a brief list of some of Miss Porter’s famous graduates.

Rich Girls

Princess Anastasia

Princess Anastasia of Greece and Denmark was an American heiress born Nonie “Nancy” May Stewart Worthington Leeds in Zanesville, Ohio. Her family soon moved to Cleveland and sent her to Miss Porter’s. After graduation she entered high society and married Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark after two failed marriages. Because of the prince’s finances, the U.S. press called her the ‘Tin Plate Heiress,’ the ‘Dollar Princess’ and the ‘Million Dollar Princess.’

Brenda Diana Duff Frazier was one of the Depression Era’s ‘Poor little rich girls.’ Neither of her parents were paragons of virtue in parenthood, according to a judge. They shunted her off to boarding schools, including Miss Porter’s, even as she appeared in café society at 15. She married football star Shipwreck Kelly and had affairs with New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno and Howard Hughes. Married unhappily to a sales executive, she tried suicide more than 30 times.

The Movies

Edith Bouvier Beale, a first cousin to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, pursued fame without much luck. Then the documentary film Grey Gardens came along. The film showed her living with her mother, poor and isolated on an East Hampton estate. When the film came out, Jackie intervened and paid $32,000 to clean the house, install a new furnace and plumbing system and cart away 1,000 bags of garbage. Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee bought the house in 1979.

Edith Bouvier Beale

Gloria Vanderbilt — heiress, socialite, blue jean designer — also fell victim to a custody battle. Her father died of cirrhosis when she was a toddler, and her carefree mother lost a sensational custody case to her aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whltney. She married movie agent Pat DiCicco at the age of 17. After graduating from Miss Porter’s, she studied at the Art Student’s League. She maintained a romance with photographer Gordon Parks for many years. Other notable lovers included Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Howard Hughes, and Roald Dahl. Truman Capote was said to have modeled the character of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s on her. With her fourth husband, Wyatt Emory Cooper, she had two sons: Carter, who committed suicide at 23 by jumping out of a 14-story building, and Anderson, CNN news anchor.

Dina Merrill is the only child of Post Cereals heiress, Marjorie Merriweather Post, and her second husband, the Wall Street stockbroker, Edward Francis Hutton. As a Hollywood actress she appeared in 22 films, including Caddyshack.

Hostages and Hostesses

Dina Merrill

Cissy Patterson was the granddaughter of Joseph Medill, owner of the Chicago Tribune and mayor of Chicago. She made a name for herself in Washington society, then bought and published the Washington Times-Herald. She befriended Marguerite Cassini, daughter of the Russian ambassador, and Alice Roosevelt. The press labeled them the ‘Three Graces.’ She then married Count Josef Gizycki over her parents’ strenuous objections. Patterson should have listened to them. He beat her, cheated on her, gambled and kidnapped her for 18 months, demanding $1 million in ransom. Patterson spent 13 years trying to divorce him.

Theodate Pope Riddle graduated from Miss Porter’s with the Class of 1888. She hired faculty members to tutor her privately in architecture. After surviving the sinking of the Lusitania, she got her license as an architect in New York and Connecticut, the first woman to do so. Riddle designed Hill-Stead, the family estate (now Hill-Stead Museum) in Farmington, and she designed and founded the famous Avon Old Farms School and Westover School. She also reconstructed the birthplace of former President Theodore Roosevelt.

Cissy Patterson

Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb, the granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, attended Miss Porter’s School during the 1870s. She inherited $10 million, and with it she bought and developed Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vt. She designed gardens, decorated the interior and planned meals – including one for President William Henry Taft. Her husband, William Seward Webb, missed that dinner, Taft said, because he’d gotten drunk.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Miss Porter’s Finishes Socialites, Scholars and a First Lady

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