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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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Six Historic Love Nests

In honor of Valentines Day, the New England Historical Society chose to highlight six love nests.

Love nests can be lavish mansions built for mistresses or summer homes where movie stars can canoodle. Or they can be places where long and happy marriages take place.

We even included a house that was a love nest only in an author’s imagination.

Here, then, are six historic love nests, one for each New England state. If you know of another historic love nest, please share it in the comments section.

Hepburn House

Katharine Hepburn’s house in Fenwick, probably Connecticut’s most famous love nests.

Katharine Hepburn loved her summer home in Fenwick, and she loved her married co-star Spencer Tracy.

And, lucky for her, she could enjoy both of them together.

She had been going to the summer beach colony in Old Saybrook, Conn., since she was five years old. Born in Hartford in 1907, she swam, sailed and golfed at the wealthy enclave. After she met Spencer Tracy on the set of Woman of the Year, she could have called it her love nest.

At that first meeting, Katharine famously said, “I fear I may be too tall for you, Mr. Tracy.” Film director George Stevens retorted, “Don’t worry, he’ll soon cut you down to size.”

Instead, they fell in love with each other. They starred in nine movies together, but lived apart and kept their affair private. Tracy was estranged from his wife, but neither sought a divorce.

Tracy and Hepburn stayed together at Hepburn’s Fenwick home. Her caddy remembers them having breakfast together.

The house, at 10 Mohegan Ave., is privately owned, but you can visit the Katharine Hepburn Museum in Old Saybrook. It’s at 300 Main St. Click here for more information.

Aaron Dunning House

As love nests go, this one was imaginary. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

Visitors to Brunswick, Maine can take a stroll past 76 Federal Street, also known as the Aaron Dunning House at the corner of Cleaveland Street. This was where Nathaniel Hawthorne (Bowdoin Class of 1825) spent most of his school days.

Across the street was the home of Professor Parker Cleaveland, a mineralogist who taught Hawthorne. More importantly to the future author, Cleaveland’s very attractive servant also lived there. Whenever someone arrived at Cleaveland’s door, Hawthorne would come to his window to catch a view of the young woman.

Some writers suggest this young woman was the model for a character in his first novel, Fanshawe, set at the fictional Harley College. The college bears a striking resemblance to Bowdoin.

In real life, 76 Federal Street served Hawthorne’s love nest only in his imagination. Some say Professor Cleaveland thwarted Hawthorne’s desire by shooing him away from the young lady. If so, that would explain his portrayal of an academic in his short story, The Great Carbuncle. An extremely eccentric fictional Doctor Cacophodel bore a striking resemblance to Professor Cleaveland.

The Aaron Dunning House is private, but you can see it at 76 Federal St., Brunswick, Maine

Emily Dickinson Museum

As love nests go, this one may have been the oddest.

Emily Dickinson’s married brother Austin carried on an illicit love affair for 13 years with Mabel Loomis Todd, also married.

The whole town of Amherst, Mass., including Todd’s husband, knew about the affair. He thought it was okay. Austin’s wife did not.

Austin used to take Mabel next door, where his mother and reclusive sisters Emily and Lavinia lived. They’d then have sex on Emily Dickinson’s dining room sofa.

We know because Austin recorded everything in his diary. For example, on January 3, 1886, he wrote, “at the other house 3 to 5 and +=====XXX.” Mabel, who also kept a diary, wrote on the same day. “A most exquisitely happy and satisfactory two hours.”

Emily Dickinson, who surely knew what went on in the dining room, died in 1886. Lavinia asked Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson to publish her poems. They did, and Mabel embarked on a lecture tour that made famous the reclusive Emily.

Mabel’s affair with Austin ended with his death in 1895.

The Emily Dickinson Museum includes both Emily’s and Austin’s house. It is at 280 Main St. in Amherst, Mass. Click here for more information.

Wentworth Coolidge House

One of New Hampshire’s colonial love nests.

When the cream of Portsmouth, N.H., society assembled at Gov. Benning Wentworth’s house in March of 1760, they had no idea they’d entered his love nest.

Wentworth had a surprise in store for his guests.

His maid entered the room, not to serve the meal but to get married – to the governor.

Wentworth, at 64, had been widowed and his two sons had died. He hoped to produce an heir.

Martha Hilton, 23, decided to marry the crotchety, portly, gouty Wentworth. The two tied the knot right there in the midst of colonial New Hampshire’s high society. They remained married, living in what is now the Wentworth-Coolidge House for a decade. The marriage ended with Wentworth’s death.

Wentworth-Coolidge House, 375 Little Harbor Road, Portsmouth, N.H. Open to visitors in spring, summer and fall.

Grace Vanderbilt

The most lavish of the love nests, it is now the Grace Vanderbilt. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, the third son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, built the 33-room Newport mansion in 1909 as a love nest for his mistress, Agnes O’Brien Ruiz.

The affair caused a scandal, as Ruiz was married to the Cuban attache in Washington and Vanderbilt’s wife, the former Elsie French, had moved in with her brother.

The Vanderbilt family told Alfred he could have his money or his mistress, but not both. He chose the money. Ruiz committed suicide.

Vanderbilt remarried and died in the Lusitania sinking. The love nest became a luxury hotel, the Grace Vanderbilt.

You can stay at the Grace Vanderbilt at 41 Mary St., Newport, R.I.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Farm

The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller mansion is now part of a national park.

When he was 17 years old, Laurance Rockefeller developed his first crush on Mary French. She was the sister of his brother Nelson’s Dartmouth College roommate.

Nothing came of it until several years later, when he attended Harvard Law School and she studied sculpture in Cambridge, Mass. They married in 1934 in Woodstock, Vt., where they held the wedding reception at Mary’s family’s summer home.

They had a close partnership dedicated to philanthropy and conservation. In 1951, at the age of 41, Mary inherited her family’s Woodstock estate, which had originally belonged to environmentalist George Perkins Marsh. Her grandfather, railroad tycoon Frederick Billings, bought it and established a model farm on the property.

Their love nest became the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park when Mary and Laurance gave it to the federal government in 1992.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Mansion, 54 Elm St., Woodstock, Vt.

This story was updated in 2023.

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12 Fascinating Facts About Independence Day

Independence Day from the get-go has been a rowdy holiday with ringing bells, gunfire, cannon fire, fireworks, feasting, speeches and toasts.

Over the years, people tried to turn it into something else: a platform for temperance speeches, a chance for immigrants to express their ‘American-ness,’ a ‘safe-and-sane’ holiday. But it always seems to revert to a rowdy celebration.

Here then, is a list of 12 fascinating facts about the Independence Day.

1. Adams Messed Up

It didn’t really happen this way. Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull.

John Adams got the date wrong. In a letter to his wife Abigail from Philadelphia on July 3, 1776, he wrote, “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.” You can understand his mistake, since the Continental Congress approved independence on July 2. And all the signers of the Declaration of Independence didn’t exactly gather around the parchment and sign at once. Some had left Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Moreover, the Declaration didn’t get printed with all the names of the signers until January 1777, by Mary Katherine Goddard in Baltimore.

2. A Looong Independence Day Tradition

Boston fireworks, 2011.

Fireworks go all the way back to 1777, when Boston and Philadelphia held the first displays. The Continental Congress authorized the fireworks in Philadelphia. And in Boston, “Col. Crafts illuminated his park on the commons, threw several shells, and exhibited a number of fireworks.”

3. Quite a Streak

Charles Francis Adams

The Adams family participated in official Independence Day celebrations for 116 consecutive years. It started from the time John signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and ended in 1892, when Charles Francis Adams, Jr., gave a speech at the First Church in Quincy, Mass.

4. Independence Day Toasts

George Washington by Gilbert Stuart

During the 19th century, people loved to drink patriotic toasts on the Independence celebrations. Tipplers carefully prepared the toasts and often published them in the local newspaper. They frequently toasted George Washington. For example, a toast from Lexington, Mass., in 1814, went like this: “The memory of Washington. May his name no more be profaned by Hypocrites, as that of Jesus has been by the Jesuits.”

5. Independence Day Time Capsule

Massachusetts State House from the Boston Common

On the Fourth of July in 1795, Paul Revere and Gov. Sam Adams laid the cornerstone for the Massachusetts State House in Boston. They also buried a copper time capsule. It contained a pine tree shilling coin from 1652, a copper medal engraved with an image of George Washington, several newspapers and a silver plate thought to be engraved by Paul Revere. State officials opened the time capsule in 2014.

6. Career Launch

Young Daniel Webster

On the Fourth of July 1800, Daniel Webster launched his political career as an 18-year-old Dartmouth junior. He was chosen to deliver a speech at the college because of his reputation as a speaker and debater. In the speech he praised the veterans of the Revolution, George Washington and the unifying authority of the U.S. Constitution.

7. Coincidence?

Thomas Jefferson

John Adams died on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. His last words were “Jefferson still survives.” He got it wrong; Jefferson died five hours earlier. Only one signer of the Declaration still lived in 1826: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Md., who died six years later at the age of 95.

8. Playing with Fire

Aftermath of the Great Portland Fire.

A Fourth of July firecracker in 1866 started the Great Portland Fire in Maine. The conflagration, the worst to date in the United States, burned 1800 buildings. It left 10,000 homeless and killed two. Fireworks, though, didn’t cause as many Fourth of July fatalities as toy guns. The toy bullets — blank cartridges, actually — pierced the skin and caused tetanus, the leading cause of Independence Day deaths in the 19th century.

Henry Ward Beecher speaking at Woodstock, Conn, President Grant seated. From a Harper’s Weekly engraving courtesy Library of Congress.

9. Bor-ing

Starting in 1870, Henry C. Bowen, a businessman, hosted the country’s largest Fourth of July party in Woodstock, Conn., at his Roseland Cottage. The event featured many, many, many speeches; so many, that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes tried to get out of going in 1877. Bowen didn’t drink, and President Ulysses S. Grant had to sneak a cocktail on the porch at the first party in 1870.

The Boston Pops plays Stars and Stripes Forever.

10. Independence Day Pops

The Boston Pops Orchestra has played Stars and Stripes Forever at the end of its concerts since 1899, two years after John Philip Sousa composed it. Arthur Fiedler included it in the first Independence Day Pops concert on the Esplanade in 1929. The Pops has played it ever since, the flag always dropping in the final moments of the piece. As many as 500,000 people show up for the concert.

Americanization Day poster

11. Americanization Day

Future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis kicked off the first Americanization Day with a Fourth of July speech in 1915 at Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Americanization Day, an attempt to crowd out Independence Day, responded to nearly two decades of increasing immigration, a sore spot for many Americans. The Americanization Day movement set about to reshape the day’s image around themes of immigrants embracing American culture. It didn’t last.

12. No White House Celebration

Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

The saddest Independence Day in the White House was probably in 1924, when President Calvin Coolidge spent most of the day at the bedside of his 16-year-old son. Calvin Coolidge, Jr., had developed septic poisoning after he played tennis without socks and it caused a blister that got infected. He died on July 7.

With thanks to James R. Heintze’s Fourth of July Celebrations Database. Boston Fireworks image By Pablo Valerio – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15723763. This story was updated in 2023.

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A Christmas First for New England? Each State Can Claim One.

New England is as unlikely a place as there is to celebrate a Christmas first. After all, Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut officially banned the holiday. It wasn’t until the mid-19^th century that most New Englanders took the day off, let alone trimmed trees, sang carols or sent cards.

And yet, with a little imagination, we can find a Christmas first in each of the New England states.

First Christmas Tree in Connecticut

A German father and son collecting a tree, painting by Franz Krüger

Painting of a German father and son collecting a tree, by Franz Krüger

A Hessian soldier named Hendrick Roddemore put up a Christmas tree in Windsor Locks, Conn., in 1777, giving Connecticut the claim to the first Christmas tree.

The Americans captured Roddemore, a mercenary, at the Battle of Bennington.

Many prisoners from that battle were sent to Boston and then elsewhere. Roddemore ended up at the farm of Samuel Denslow in Windsor Locks. Denslow let him live in a small cabin on what is now the Noden-Reed Farm and home of the Windsor Locks Historical Society.

In 1777, Roddemore raised a Christmas tree inside that small cabin. He continued to live there until well after the war, putting up a tree every year. Today, a stone marks the spot where Roddemore put up that first tree.

First North American Christmas in Maine

christmas-firsts-buildings_on_saint_croix_island_-_circa_1613_-_project_gutenberg_etext_20110

First buildings on St. Croix

Maine can claim perhaps the best Christmas first: the first Christmas, in 1604. It happened on St. Croix Island, the lost French colony of Maine.

St. Croix Island, now on the border between New Brunswick and Maine, was settled by a small band of Frenchmen headed by Sieur DeMons. Samuel Champlain served as historian and navigator. The expedition included thieves from Paris prisons and noblemen from the court of Henry IV, Catholic priests and Huguenot ministers, artisans, merchants and sailors.

The Frenchmen arrived in June, almost three years before Jamestown started. They built a fort, houses and a handmill, and they planted gardens and a field of rye.

On Christmas day, the French colonists, all men, attended services in a new chapel. They probably held two, one for the Protestants, one for the Catholics.

Then they gathered inside next to a roaring fire, told stories, joked and reminisced about France. They had a feast — perhaps roast venison or rabbit stew.

The St. Croix settlement did not last. Most of the men were felled by a mysterious disease – probably scurvy. By spring they decided to move, packed up their houses and moved to Port Royal, which is now Annapolis.

First American Christmas Card in Massachusetts

A Christmas first for Massachusetts: The Louis Prang Christmas card.

One man can take credit for the first American Christmas card: Louis Prang. He fled the German wars of 1848 and came to Boston. Prang went to work for an engraver, eventually setting up his own lithography shop.

The first Christmas card had already been sent in 1843 by an Englishman named Sir Henry Cole. He had a thousand cards designed and printed, but he couldn’t send them all. So he sold the leftovers for a shilling. Word spread about the cards, and soon English printers were churning them out.

The fad didn’t spread to America until Louis Prang found out about it. He decided the potential market was huge. In 1875 he printed his first Christmas cards for the London market, and the next year he sold them throughout the Northeast. It took but two more years for him to corner the greeting card market in the United States.

By 1881, Louis Prang was printing more than 5 million Christmas cards a year. His Prang Lithographic Factory in Roxbury became a tourist attraction, and he often conducted tours himself. His house and factory are still standing, the house at 45 Centre St. and the factory at 270-286 Roxbury St.

Eventually Louis Prang moved his business to Springfield, where he continued to make Christmas cards as well as child-safe art materials – which you can still buy under the Prang name.

A White House Christmas Tree from NH

The 1997 Christmas ornament depicting the Pierce White House

New Hampshire native Sarah Josepha Hale deserves credit for promoting the Christmas tree in her popular magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book.

In 1856, another New Hampshire native introduced the first Christmas tree to the White House.

President Franklin Pierce and First Lady Jane Pierce invited the Sunday school class of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church to join them in trimming the tree for Christmas. The Pierces were mourning for their son, Benny, who died in a train wreck shortly before they moved into the White House.

It was no accident that the Pierces chose a Sunday school class to trim the tree. Christmas trees had gained such acceptance in Sunday schools they were even called ‘Sunday school trees.’ Children who memorized Bible verses got rewarded with trinkets and candy hanging from the tree. When cold weather caused churchgoers to stay home, a decorated indoor tree enticed children to brave the winter temperatures.

The Pierces had never taken a Puritanical attitude toward Christmas. In 1824, Pierce’s father, Benjamin, hosted 21 veteran soldiers from the American Revolution to his home in Hillsoborough, N.H., for a Christmas feast.

Sighting of Santa Claus in RI

A Newport, R.I., resident wrote this

Clement Moore wrote A Visit From St. Nicholas for his children, never intending it to become the most popular Christmas poem ever. Nor did he expect it would forever define Santa Claus as a jolly old elf who flew around on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

Moore grew up the son of the Episcopalian bishop of New York who twice served as president of Columbia University. His mother inherited a vast estate, now the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. Moore was an intellectual, a professor of Biblical Learning and author of the first Hebrew-American dictionary.

In 1822, Moore borrowed some Dutch and German Christmas lore for his poem, a gift to his six children. A friend copied it and submitted it to the Troy, N.Y., Sentinel. The newspaper published it on Dec. 23, 1823, and for many years thereafter. It wasn’t until 1837 that Moore was identified as the author. Moore himself didn’t acknowledge authorship until 1844 – and only because his children insisted.

So how does Rhode Island fit in?

Sometime in the 1850s, Moore bought a home in Newport, R.I., and became a summer resident.

The house is known as ‘Cedars,’ ‘Clement C. Moore House,’ and ‘The Night Before Christmas House.’ It still stands at 25 Catherine St., though it has been broken up into apartments. Some have claimed that he wrote ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ in Newport. The Redwood Library tells us that’s unlikely as the house hadn’t been built when Moore wrote the poem.

The First National Christmas Tree from Vermont

The National Christmas Tree.

In 1923, a General Electric engineer named Frederick Morris Feiker wrote to President Calvin Coolidge suggesting he light the national Christmas tree on the Ellipse. Coolidge asked the president of Middlebury College to donate a tree from Vermont.

Wealthy Middlebury alumni paid to ship the 48-foot-tall balsam fir to Washington, D.C. A crane put the tree in place a few weeks before Christmas, and $5,000 worth of GE electrical cables illuminated the 2,500 red, white and green Christmas lights.

At 3 p.m. on Dec. 24, a choir began a two-hour concert of Christmas carols. At dusk, President Coolidge pushed the button to light the tree. As many as 9,000 people came to the Ellipse to sing carols over the next four hours.

This story was updated in 2020.

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The Pet Names of Famous New Englanders

When the Pilgrims came to America on the Mayflower, they brought with them two dogs described as a spaniel and a mastiff. Though their names are unknown, the pet names of many famous four-legged New Englanders have not been lost to history.

John Adams and his wife Abigail were the first inhabitants of the White House, and their dogs were the first to romp on the White House lawn. The Adamses had two mutts named Juno and Satan. “If you love me … you must love my dog,” Abigail wrote in a letter to her granddaughter, Caroline Smith. As president, John Adams had the White House stables built, presumably to house his horse Cleopatra.

‘Love me, love my dog.’ Abigail Adams, detail from painting by Gilbert Stuart

Satan and Sin

Mark Twain loved cats and loved to play pool. Whenever he played, he put a kitten into the corner pocket.

“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction,” he once wrote. So great was his affection for cats that he once rented two kittens, named Sackcloth and Ashes, during a summer stay in Dublin, N.H.

His pet names for his cats also included Sour Mash, Appollinaris, Zoraster, Blatherkite and Beelzebub. His favorite: Bambino.

pet-names-mark-twain-with-cat-on-his-shoulder

Mark Twain and friend.

He had a black cat named Satan and a tortoise-shell cat named Sin. They got along well.

“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction,” he once wrote.

“I simply can’t resist a cat, particularly a purring one,” he said. “They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.”

Henry David Thoreau had a pet cat named Sylvia. Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently didn’t much like animals and had no pets. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter Una had a Newfoundland named Leo.

Smart Setter?

Author Thomas Bailey Aldrich had an Irish setter named Grip, who he believed was smarter than some men he knew. The dog loved to bring Aldrich’s slippers from the bedroom to the parlor. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier had a dog named Robin Adair.

Daniel Webster wasn’t terribly fond of dogs or cats, but he loved oxen. When the great statesman returned to his Marshfield farm to die, one of his last pleasures was to sit in his window and admire his oxen. He was said to know them all by name, but alas, those pet names are lost to us.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., during his two-year voyage aboard the Pilgrim, adopted a dog he named Bravo in San Diego. Frederick Law Olmsted took a bull terrier named Judy along when he traveled the South to write about slavery.

Grace Coolidge, official White House portrait

Abolitionist John Brown loved animals and gave pet names to many. As a boy he had a pet squirrel named Bobtail. He raised sheep and had two shepherd dogs named Toss and Jack.

A Vice Named Cuddle Bunch

Louisa May Alcott joked her vices included an inordinate love of cats. She had a black cat named Cuddle Bunch who “had a fit,” and fell out of a window to her death.

Harriet Beecher Stowe loved her cat named Calvin who, according to Charles Dudley Warner, “walked into her house one day out of the great unknown and became at once at home.” Stowe named Calvin after her husband and let him sit on her shoulder while she wrote.

Marian Anderson owned two Kerry Blue terriers, Falla, after President Roosevelt’s dog, and Fenon.

Presidential Pet Names

Calvin Coolidge and his wife Grace brought a menagerie to the White House. Their pets included white collies named Rob Roy and Prudence Prim, terriers named Peter Pan and Paul Pry, a Shetland sheepdog named Calamity Jane, chow chows named Tiny Tim and Blackberry, a bulldog named Boston Beans and a German shepherd named King Cole.

The Kennedy family on vacation with their dogs. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

The John F. Kennedy White House was filled with pets comprised of a mutt named Pushinka, a gift from Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev. Other pet names included a German shepherd named Clipper, a cocker spaniel named Shannon, an Irish wolfhound named Shannon, and the president’s favorite dog, a Welsh terrier named Charlie.

The First Couple often took one or two of the family dogs out for a walk under the cover of darkness. Traphes Bryant, the White House dog handler, said the people didn’t recognize them as Secret Service agents followed discreetly in a car. Sometimes, Bryant said, they “looked like two young college kids taking the dogs for a walk. They looked so happy.”

Cultural Pet Names

Leonard Bernstein, who grew up in Lawrence and later lived in Redding, Conn., owned a series of Dachsunds all named Henry. As an adult he owned a sheltie named Honey.

Bernstein incorporated the pet names of his friends’ animals into his music. The Library of Congress’s collection of his music manuscripts includes a trumpet score in Bernstein’s writing called Rondo (for Lifey). He sent it to actress Judy Holliday, whose dog was named Lifey. The music and lyric sketches for Bernstein’s orchestral composition Slava! have an alternate title on the title page: Puk – the pet name for Rostropovich’s dog.

The Bernstein family and Honey. Photo courtesy Library of Congress .

T.S. Eliot, though he grew up in St. Louis, was a member of the Boston Brahmin Eliots and summered in Gloucester, Mass. Eliot wrote “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” full of eccentric pet names like Skimbleshanks, Growltiger, Mr. Mistoffelees and Gus.. The book became the Broadway musical Cats.

And Lillian Jackson Braun, a native of Chicopee Falls, Mass., also invented fictional cats — Koko and Yum Yum — in her The Cat Who… mystery series.

This story about the pet names of famous New Englanders was updated in 2022.

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How Two New England Architects Saved the White House, Part I

Imagine the White House today with a sunken living room, Danish modern furniture and plywood paneling. The historic old building might have been redesigned in Mid-Century Modern had it not been for the preservation efforts of two architects born and trained in New England.

President Truman with the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion. Left to right: Major General Glen E. Edgerton, Representative McGregor, Senator Kenneth McKellar, Richard E. Dougherty, the president, Mr. Douglas W. Orr, Representative Louis C. Rabaut, Senator Edward Martin. Courtesy National Park Service.

Few people realize the White House had fallen into serious disrepair by 1948. President Harry Truman moved out for three years while workers gutted the building to its exterior walls. They quietly buried most of the original paneling and fixtures in a Virginia landfill.

The public was led to believe the Executive Mansion had been restored. Even Hillary Clinton thought she’d walked down hallways Lincoln had walked. She hadn’t.

It could have been worse. The building might have been razed, if some members of Congress had their way. They wanted to build a modern new house for the President. (And remember, this was the 1950s.)

“People don’t realize how close they came to losing the White House,” said Robert Klara, author of The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence.

Klara credits Lorenzo Winslow and Douglas Orr with preserving the historic character of the mansion – to the extent it was preserved.

Harry Truman

Cracks discovered in the north brick wall of the West Sitting Hall revealed during the engineering inspection in 1948. Courtesy National Park Service.

Most people know how Jackie Kennedy restored the White House, but few know she was simply finishing the job Harry Truman started.

Franklin Roosevelt had neglected the upkeep of the White House during the Depression and World War II. The Army Corps of Engineers cautioned him about failing wooden supports, crumbling masonry and major fire hazards. Roosevelt ignored the warning.

After Roosevelt died in 1945, Harry Truman, his wife Bess and daughter Margaret toured the White House before moving in. They were shocked by the cracked, dingy walls and the furniture that belonged in a third-rate boardinghouse. “The White House upstairs is a mess,” wrote Margaret in her diary after their visit. “I was so depressed when I saw it.”

Shortly after the Trumans moved in they began to notice the White House ghosts. The floors heaved like the deck of a schooner. Half-ton chandeliers swayed, stretched and danced above the heads of guests oblivious to the danger. Draperies moved and groans emanated from the old walls.

Harry Truman eventually realized it was the sound of the mansion slowly collapsing.

In 1948 Truman was taking a bath on the second floor when his valet walked in and the floor buckled. Truman envisioned the tub falling onto the DAR tea party below, ‘wearing nothing more than his reading glasses.’

Then one day in June daughter Margaret was playing the piano in her sitting room when a piano leg plunged through the floor and through the ceiling of the family dining room below.

Abusing the White House

Demolition work in 1950 exposed architect James Hoban’s original plaster cornice beneath the cornice from the 1902 Theodore Roosevelt renovation by McKim, Mead and White. Courtesy National Park Service.

Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t the only president responsible for the disrepair of the White House.

The original architect hadn’t built foundations for the heavy interior walls, which sat on soft clay and gravel. The British burned the building in 1814, and scorched wooden beams were reused in its remodeling. Successive presidents had structural supports cut through to add indoor plumbing, gas lighting, electric wiring and heating ducts. Old water pipes, gas pipes and heating ducts were left in place, adding weight to the building.

In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt’s renovation and expansion of the White House took out a load-bearing wall. And in 1927, Calvin Coolidge added a concrete-and-steel third floor under a rebuilt roof, transferring weight to the unsupported interior walls.

Part of the problem was that work had to be done quickly because presidents were only guaranteed to live in the White House for four years.

By 1948, some said the White House was standing only from the force of habit.

By the time Margaret Truman’s piano leg fell through the floor, her father had quietly asked engineers and architects to investigate the White House’s condition. Truman didn’t want to publicize the sorry state of the building. Despite his dismal approval ratings, he was running for re-election. He knew the image of a collapsing White House was an apt metaphor for his plummeting popularity.

Parking Garage

Inside the White House during renovation. Truman wrote it was just a shell. Courtesy National Park Service.

Harry Truman shocked pollsters by winning the 1948 presidential elections. After a summer of campaigning, the Trumans were ready to move back into the Executive Mansion. By then, investigators believed the White House was in imminent danger of collapse. They said it was too dangerous for the First Family to live in.

For the next three years, the Trumans lived in the Blair House across from the White House. It was dangerous there, too, because the house was so close to the sidewalk.

Demolition of the White House interior began without fanfare in December 1949. Fences were built around the building so the public couldn’t know what was going on inside them.

“It’s surprising that people have no idea what happened to it,” Klara said.

End of Part I of this story. Click here for Part II. This story last updated in 2022.

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