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Warren G. Harding

The Fabulous McLeans and Their Hoodoo Diamond

When Evalyn and Ned McLean got married in 1908, they seemed to have it all. A golden couple, they had wealth, connections and loving families. As a wedding present, the McLeans got a summer cottage (read “mansion”) in Bar Harbor, Maine. Bar Harbor had for decades been a magnet for Gilded Age show-offs.

That first summer was perhaps their happiest. But then their lives over the next 30 years would descend into madness, scandal and ruin. Their demise almost coincided perfectly with their ownership of the Hope diamond.

The Hope diamond

Was it bad luck, brought on by the Hope diamond, or their own recklessness and mental illness?

Or was it just too much money? Evalyn, after their divorce, wrote that Ned’s problem was “unearned wealth in undisciplined hands.”

Pot, meet kettle.

The McLeans

Evalyn, born Aug. 1, 1886, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant carpenter, Thomas Walsh, and Carrie Bell Reed, his school teacher wife. During Evalyn’s early years, she and her brother traveled the west with her parents as her father prospected for gold. When she was 10, he came into her bedroom and said, “Daughter, I’ve struck it rich.” He had found the Camp Bird gold mine in Colorado, one of the most lucrative ever.

The family moved to Washington, D.C., where they ate off gold plates in their 60-room mansion. Evalyn went to school in her own coach with matched horses and a coachman who wore silk. If she wasn’t wearing jewelry, Evalyn said, you knew she wasn’t feeling well.

Ned McLean came from older money and more distinguished ancestors — military heroes, diplomats, explorers, capitalists. His mother, Emily Truxtun Beale, was the daughter of Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a prominent diplomat, explorer and military officer. His father, John Roll McLean, co-founded the Great Falls and Old Dominion Railroad in Virginia, and the town that grew up around it was named McLean. The elder McLean also owned the Cincinnati Post and part of the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Later he bought the Washington Post.

As Evalyn later observed in her autobiography, the Beale genes had weakened by the time they got to Ned.

Ned and Evalyn

Ned met Evalyn in dancing class when she was 11 and he was eight. He fell in love with her at first sight. He asked her to marry him a number of times, but she refused because of his heavy drinking.

Evalyn Walsh McLean

When she finally said yes in 1908, they eloped to Colorado. Their parents gave them $200,000 for a three-month honeymoon in Europe and the Middle East. They blew through it all and couldn’t pay their hotel bill in Paris.

They moved into a huge mansions called Friendship in Washington, D.C. From there they hobnobbed with heads of state, traveled the world and partied around the clock.

One of their lavish parties prompted a guest to remark, “This is what brings on revolutions.”

Ned befriended President Warren G. Harding, who Evalyn thought might be a good influence on Ned. It turned out that Ned was a bad influence on the president.

The McLeans Buy the Hope Diamond

In 1910 in Paris, the McLeans first saw the Hope diamond. Called the most expensive item you can hold in one hand, it’s now worth $200 million. Pierre Cartier sold it to them after telling them about the curse. A French gem merchant named Tavernier had stolen it from the eye, or maybe the forehead, of a statue of the Hindu goddess Sita. Then wild dogs tore him apart. Another owner, Princess de Lambale, died when a French mob beat her to death. Marie Antoinette owned it. In 1908, Sultan Abdul Hamid bought it and lost his throne. His concubine who wore it died young.

Few of the stories had any truth to them. Tavernier died of old age. Marie Antoinette, however, had owned the diamond.

Ned bought the gem for $154,000 in the offices of the Washington Post, where he worked as managing editor.

To be extra careful, Evalyn had the stone blessed in a church. As the minister said a prayer over it, a flash of lightning toppled a large tree across the street.

Evalyn said she didn’t believe the curse, though she never let her children or her friends touch it. But she let her dog wear it sometimes at parties.

Tragedy Strikes the McLeans

The blessing didn’t seem to work. Ned’s mother, who had told them not to buy the diamond, died within a year of its purchase. Evalyn’s father had died that year as well, and, grief-stricken, she lapsed into morphine addiction. Ned continued to rely on alcohol, sometimes using a sling to steady his drinking hand.

Evalyn’s mental health deteriorated to the point where she couldn’t recognize her party guests, and she started to hallucinate. Ned then had a sanitarium built for her on the top floor of their Washington mansion.

Their first son, Vinson, received quite a lot of publicity as the $100 million baby. The McLeans, fearful of kidnappers, hired bodyguards to keep watch over him. But at the age of nine, the boy slipped away from his minders and ran into the street, where a car ran over him. He died that night. Ned and Evalyn hadn’t been home; they’d gone to Louisville, Ky., to see the races.

Years later, the curse of the Hope diamond would claim another victim. The McLeans’ 19-year-old daughter, Evalyn, wore the gem at her wedding to 57-year-old Robert Rice Reynolds. He was an isolationist, a Nazi sympathizer and co-owner of a fascist anti-Semitic newspaper. Six years into their marriage, she committed suicide.

Ned McLean

Evalyn’s real curse, however, seems to have been her husband. At 22, Ned’s father made him managing editor of the Washington Post. He turned the newspaper into a reactionary, juvenile newspaper viewed with disdain by journalists.

Ned McLean

Even his pets were dissipated. Ned owned a trained seal and fed it a fifth of whiskey every day. Once he brought a trained bear to a Florida whorehouse, where it mauled two women inside.

While visiting his friend President Harding at the White House, he infuriated the First Lady by urinating into an East Room fireplace.

The McLeans owned two houses near the executive mansion, one of which they rented to Attorney General Harry Daugherty. Daugherty held a round-the-clock party at the house, called the Love Nest. One night, Ned brought call girls and prostitutes to the Love Nest. Things got out of hand and people started throwing things. A bottle struck one of the women in the head, and she died a few days later. An FBI agent who took her to the hospital recalled Harding leaning on the fireplace.

Ned then got implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal. His friend, Interior Secretary Albert Fall, had accepted a bribe to lease oil reserves without asking for bids. Ned, at first, agreed to say he had loaned Fall the money. But the senator who led the investigation into the scandal figured correctly that Ned couldn’t have loaned Fall the money. He was broke.

The Lindbergh Kidnapping

In 1929, Ned left Evalyn for another woman and they divorced. But four years later, Evalyn had her ex-husband committed to an insane asylum, where he once danced the hokey-pokey with Zelda Fitzgerald.

On March 1, 1932, a kidnapper took Charles and Anne Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son from their home in New Jersey. Evalyn, remembering her fears for her young son Vinson, hocked the Hope diamond to raise ransom money for the baby. She gave the money to a rogue FBI agent, who kept the money for himself. The Lindbergh baby was found dead, and the FBI agent went to prison.

Ned died of a heart attack in the insane asylum in 1941, leaving what little money he had left to his common-law wife.

Evalyn never got over the death of her daughter. She had to lease her Washington mansion to the government for office space. In 1947, she died of pneumonia, as the plaster falling from the walls of her home.

Aftermath

Evalyn left the Hope diamond to her grandchildren. In 1947, they sold it to jeweler Harry Winston to pay her estate taxes. In 1958, Winston donated the gem to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, where you can see it today.

This story, updated in 2022, is based on a chapter in Bar Harbor Babylon by Dan and Leslie Landrigan. Click here to see Leslie Landrigan talk about the book on a podcast.

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George Dilboy, Greek Lad, Wipes Out a German Machine Gun Nest

Gen. John Pershing called him one of the 10 greatest heroes of World War I. The City of Somerville, Mass., remembers him with a bust, an athletic field and a stadium. Three presidents honored him. So who was George Dilboy?

He was a 22-year-old Greek-American who died heroically at Belleau Wood in France. He had already fought in four wars on three continents when he fell while wiping out a German machine gun nest.

His commanding officer called the feat one of the most impressive sights he had seen. And the desecration of his grave created an international incident.

George Dilboy

George Dilboy was born Feb. 5, 1896 in Alatsata near Smyrna in what is now Turkey. He had six brothers and two sisters. As his father later said, they felt Turkish persecution. The family began immigrating to the United States.

George and one of his brothers arrived in Somerville, Mass., in 1908, to join their father. George went to school, and got a job in the laundry at Massachusetts General Hospital. He also worked as a busboy at the Georgian Café. At the age of 16 he returned to his native land and fought for Greece in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13.

George Dilboy

Then he came back to the United States, where he went to work at the Copley Square Hotel. However the summer heat forced the hotel to close. So he found a job working in a shoe factory in Keene, N.H. There he enlisted in the New Hampshire National Guard in June 1916. As a guardsman he served in the Mexican border campaign. Then in 1917, he joined the Army’s 103rd Infantry Regiment, 26th Division.—known as the Yankee Division.

George Dilboy undoubtedly had more battlefield experience than most of the men who enlisted as National Guardsmen in the Yankee Division.

The Western Front

Sent to France in the fall of 1917, the Yankee Division fought German attacks in the spring. On July 18, 1918, his company had orders to control the Bouresches railway station as part of the Allied counteroffensive at Belleau Wood.

Marines fighting in Belleau Wood

According to the New York Times, Nov. 5, 1923, German machine guns were punishing Dilboy’s platoon. His lieutenant started to go to the front to see how this nest could be flanked. A young lad with an automatic rifle jumped up and said: “Lieutenant, I can wipe out these men.”

The lieutenant answered, “Go ahead.”

Dilboy threw himself flat and wriggled through a wheat field, killing several machine gunners with automatic fire. A German sniper shot him twice, but he kept going. When he reached the machine gun nest he found two remaining Germans. He then stood up and received a burst from the machine guns, which cut off his right leg. Dilboy fell on his back and pushed himself forward with his left foot. He turned his head, aimed and killed the two men.

“Lying on his back, with his right hand uppermost, the lad motioned to his platoon to go forward, and died with a smile on his face,” the Times reported.

They buried his body on the battlefield, now the Aisne-Marne Cemetery, along with 2,000 marines and soldiers who gave their lives in the victory at Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood.

Aisne-Marne Cemetery

Medal of Honor

Col. S.M. Shumway, his commanding officer, said,

It was one of the most impressive sights I experienced in the War. George Dilboy died facing the enemy, carrying on as long as there was the faintest whiff of breath in his body. He routed the enemy alone. He was as fine a soldier as ever served under the Stars and Stripes.

President Woodrow Wilson signed the authorization to award George Dilboy the Medal of Honor. In January 1919 the medal was presented to his father, Antonios Dilboy. “We came to this country from Smyrna, where my boy and other children were born,” he said. “We know and have felt the persecutions of Turkey.”

At his father’s request, George’s body was moved to his home town of Alatsata. Seventeen thousand people were said to have lined the streets watching his coffin carried into the church.

Desecration

But in 1922, Turkish troops occupied Alatsata. They broke open his coffin, scattered his bones and stole the flag.

The grave desecration infuriated President Warren G. Harding, who sent the USS Litchfield to bring back Dilboy’s remains. Harding also demanded an apology from Turkey. A Turkish guard of honor brought the boy’s remains to the battleship, with a new U.S. flag.

On Nov. 12, 1923, he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. President Calvin Coolidge presided at the ceremony.

Headstone of George Dilboy at Arlingtonn National Cemetery.

Somerville named an athletic field and stadium after him. The stadium fell into disrepair, so the city rebuilt it in 2008. A bust honoring him stands in front of Somerville City Hall. VFW posts in Keene and Somerville were named after him.

He is believed to be the first Greek-American to win the Medal of Honor.

With thanks to Carved in Stone: The Story of George Dilboy by Richard Rozakis.

Aisne-Marne Cemetery By US gov – https://web.archive.org/web/20050405022608/http://www.abmc.gov/images/am1w.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6986605. George Dilboy headstone: By Arlington National Cemetery – http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/ANCExplorer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44946194. This story last updated in 2022.

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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 New England Presidential Visits and the Stories Behind Them

New England is full of sites that hosted past presidential visits as the country’s leaders came north in search of votes, campaign cash or just a vacation. Here are six of them:

Providence, 1843

Market Square, Providence, 1844.

In 1843, President John Tyler’s presidency was reeling. Tyler was the first vice president to ascend to the presidency because the incumbent died. His detractors let him know it. They dubbed him the ‘Accidental President’ or ‘His Accidency.’

By 1843, Tyler was facing dramatic turnover in his cabinet. His efforts to negotiate the annexation of Texas into the United States was causing an uproar, since Taylor wanted it to join the United States as a slave-holding state.

Buffeted by Washington, Tyler decided to take his program to the people. He headed north, and the wildly popular response encouraged him to mount a third-party bid for office in 1844.

Tyler arrived before dawn on June 15 at Stonington, Conn., where a crowd of 2,000 greeted him.

Travelling north toward Rhode Island, the crowds began swelling around North Kingstown. The New York Herald noted that Providence was unprepared for the huge outpouring of people eager to see the president:

The curiosity to see him was immense. The Common Council of Providence mismanaged everything most horribly; a mob surrounded the cars, and set all order at defiance. An old man cried out, “Here, I’ve had my pocket picked of my pocket book.”

Tyler traveled the streets to Brown University and back to Market Square, where he ate at the Franklin House, an inn that used to stand across from the Market House.

Across the river he did some handshaking at the first indoor mall in America, the Westminster Arcade: “The president then went into a queer looking place called Westminster, and shook hands with 5,000 people,” reported the Herald.

A delegation from Lowell, Mass. buttonholed Tyler and persuaded him to visit that city, as well. He traveled there after the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument. There he learned of a new disaster brewing for his administration – his attorney general had died. The president decided to return to Washington rather than continue his tour, but his spirits were greatly improved.

Tyler finally dropped out of the 1844 race when the Whigs approved his plan to annex Texas.

The Westminster Arcade remains open to this day in Providence. Today it’s a shopping destination with two stories of apartments.

Sargent’s Purchase, N.H., 1869

Stereo-graph photo of Ulysses Grant atop Mount Washington in 1869.

In the summer of 1869, Washington’s heat drove the new president, Ulysses S. Grant, to visit New England with his wife and children.

On Aug. 27, 1869, the Grant family climbed Mount Washington. They took the three-year-old cog railway, the first cog railway in the world. Sylvester Marsh designed the railway for the mountain’s steep grade. The train has cog wheels that mesh with a toothed rail in the center of the track.

It wasn’t the first train the Grants took on that vacation. They rode from Newport, R.I., to Boston, where a large crowd greeted them. They took another train to Nashua, N.H., where they were again greeted by thousands of well-wishers. On they went to Manchester, where Grant toured the printing department of the Amoskeag Mills and greeted some 3,000 millworkers lined up to see him.

In Concord, Grant told the welcoming crowd that it was his first visit to New Hampshire and he was sorry an injury prevented him from shaking hands.

At 9 a.m. the next day, the presidential party left the Crawford House in Crawford Notch, N.H., for what was then called the Sky Railroad. According to news reports, the president was particularly struck with the simplicity and safety of the air brake.

The Grants seated themselves in the car and moved skyward. A cannon was fired when they reached the summit and the president was told the Harvards had lost the boat race. “Well I am very sorry to hear it,” Grant said.

After lunch, the presidential party headed to Littleton and then Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

The Cog Railway to the top of Mount Washington has never stopped operating.

Brattleboro, Vt., 1877

Brooks House, Brattleboro, Vt.

Until 2000, history counted the election of 1876 the closest contest for the White House ever. Rutherford B. Hayes, an Ohio Republican, won the Electoral College. Samuel Tilden, a Democrat, won the popular vote.

The two parties hammered out the compromise of 1877, in which Hayes got the White House and the Democrats got everything else. They won an end to the Reconstruction period of federal control of the South.

Without federal troops to intervene when African-Americans were harassed, Democrats soon took control of the southern statehouses. Their anti-black policies that survived for decades.

As a longtime supporter of Reconstruction, Hayes wanted to “wipe out the color line.” His efforts at promoting racial harmony failed. Perhaps no one could have succeeded.

In his first months in office, Hayes had to authorize the military to repulse Mexican criminal bandits terrorizing the border and put down the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

He needed an escape, and Vermont was the tonic. Hayes’ grandfather, Rutherford, built a home at West Brattleboro in 1780. His son, also Rutherford, built at Dummerston before moving to Delaware, Ohio, where the president Rutherford Hayes was born in 1822.

On his 1877 return visit, Hayes stayed with his cousin William Bigelow in West Brattleboro. Bigelow was said to be the wealthiest man in Vermont at one time. A large reception was held at the Brooks House in Brattleboro, and the time spent in Vermont restored Hayes’ outlook.

Vermont would retain a special place in Hayes’ life. After leaving office, he was a regular visitor. Some reports held that he had become engaged to Mary Ann Hayes Bigelow, who had been host to Hayes in 1877 with her husband William. The wedding had been delayed because of the death of Mary Ann’s son Russell, and Rutherford died before it could take place.

Hayes ordered Dummerston Granite shipped to Ohio from the family’s Vermont homestead and used it as the base for the stone that marks his and his wife’s grave.

Today Brattleboro’s Hotel Brooks is still open and operating as a shopping and dining destination.

Adams, Mass., 1897

Postcard showing statue of William McKinley at Adams, Mass.

Adams and North Adams, Mass., never had a better friend than William McKinley. His trade policies strengthened the textile industry and helped the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company grow to be a world leader in textile manufacturing.

The Plunkett family, who owned the mills, invited McKinley to stay with them twice. In 1897 he was given the honor of laying the cornerstone for the Adams Free Library. To this day the library contains a chair that was especially constructed for McKinley for the occasion.

The Plunketts also arranged for him to give a speech to the thousands of attendees at the Hoosac Valley Agricultural Fair on Sept. 22, 1897.

McKinley would return to Adams for a week stay beginning June 21, 1899, during which he was treated more like royalty. He traveled through Holyoke, Westfield, Pittsfield and Springfield, encountering huge crowds at each.

It was North Adams that pulled out all the stops. The city erected a viewing stand for McKinley to watch a special parade that featured bands, school children, military units and mounted police. Pressed to give an impromptu speech, McKinley marveled at the prosperity manufacturing had brought to the area:

I know something about North Adams from my visit two years ago, but as I rode through the beautiful streets of your city today I must confess I was wholly unprepared to witness its splendid progress and prosperity.

When McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901, no town mourned the loss more than Adams. The town erected a statue in his honor that stands to this day in front of the library he dedicated. It was rededicated in 1903.

Poland Springs, Maine, 1921

The summer of 1921 was especially gay at the Poland Springs resort, which the Ricker family had been running in one form or another since 1793. Motor traffic had never been heavier, and the first week in August was filled with dancing, tennis and golf.

Poland Spring House

That week came to a climax with a visit from President and Mrs. Warren G. Harding, who had driven from Lancaster, N.H. There they had been staying with Harding’s secretary of war, John Wingate Weeks.

On Aug. 4, 1921, the Hardings arrived in Poland Springs for lunch after driving 200 miles from Lancaster and stopping at a sanitarium in Oxford, Maine. There the president promised World War I veterans, mostly suffering from gas attacks, that the government would do everything it could to help them.

He had asked that Poland Springs do nothing special for his visit, but the caddies were noticeably excited. The president and his wife ate lunch and then he played a round of golf. That night, Harding left from Portland for Washington on the presidential yacht Mayflower.

The Poland Springs resort is still open and still offering a challenging course for golfers.

Groton, Conn., 1952

President Harry Truman laying the keel for the USS Nautilus.

On Saturday June 14, 1952, President Harry Truman visited the shipyard at Groton, Conn., to celebrate laying the keel for the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine ever built.

Truman, who ordered the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, said he hoped it would begin an age where the discoveries that fueled development of the atom bomb would be applied to industry in ways that would benefit society.

Truman envisioned planes and ships powered by atomic energy, as well as power plants driven by this inexpensive new generating process:

Such a possibility would revolutionize the technological basis of our civilization. It could provide the answer to the crying need for sources of power in the underdeveloped areas of the world. It could mean industrial development for areas now held back because they have no supply of coal, or oil, or waterpower.

Truman said he prayed the submarine would never have an enemy and be tied up someday as an historic relic of a threat of war long passed.”

While all Truman’s projections didn’t come to pass, the Nautilus is in fact tied up and open for tourists as a museum and library.

Of course Truman didn’t forget politics in his speech, praising Sen. William Bento for standing up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his red-baiting tactics.

Truman’s private journal hints at a more curmudgeonly president behind the hoopla. He wrote:

“Well here I am, Sunday evening all alone. Margaret came to the Great White Prison for the week end on Friday 13th. I went by train to Groton (rhymes with rotten) to speak on atomic energy for peace time use. Should have flown both ways but my staff decided that it would be bad weather going up. It wasn’t.”

And of the frustrations of the White House life that was coming to a close, he said, “Lesson: Don’t raise your boy to be President of the United States.”

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6 Places That Became a Summer White House

The summer White House has featured in presidential life since John Adams returned to Quincy, Mass., to get away from the muggy heat of Washington, D.C.

Spending time away from the nation’s capital also allowed presidents to sense the country’s mood and to thank their wealthy donors. New England’s wealth and cool weather attracted presidential families in the days before air conditioning.

Here are places in each of the six New England states that became a summer White House.

The Thimble Islands, Branford, Conn.

A Thimble island

According to Connecticut legend, President William Taft spent part of a presidential summer on the Thimble Islands. The Thimbles are an archipelago of 365 small islands off the coast of Branford in the Long Island Sound.

The Branford Historical Society cautions that Taft probably only visited the Thimbles as a Yale student, though ConneticutHistory claims Taft had a summer home there for two years in the 1900s.

Rutherford B. Hayes did visit Branford as president. His grandfather was born in Branford, and his great-grandfather had built the Totoket Hotel on Main Street. In 1889, President Hayes came to Branford to see the hotel his great-grandfather built. The townspeople presented him with an axe made by his great-grandfather at a reception outside the hotel.

Totoket Hotel, photo courtesy the Branford Historical Society.

The Totoket Hotel has long disappeared, but you can still visit the Thimble Islands.

Bar Harbor, Maine

President Taft’s first summer White House in Beverly.

President William Howard Taft’s summer White House started out in Beverly, Mass. For four summers, his staff ran the government from borrowed offices in downtown Beverly.

Taft’s first hostess in the city got sick and tired of Secret Service interference, nosy tourists and the hubbub surrounding the president. She told Taft not to come back at all. She even threatened to tear down the house, located at Lynch Park. Instead, she cut it in pieces, floated it across the harbor to Marblehead and left Taft to move to a new house in the neighborhood.

Taft then announced with great fanfare in July of 1910 that he would make an extended trip to Maine. With stops planned for Eastport, Bangor, Ellsworth, Rockland and Islesboro, Taft would base his operations in Bar Harbor. There, he would stay on the 273-foot presidential yacht Mayflower, with its crew of 200.

Hancock House

A Summer White House in Maine

Taft first touched land in Eastport, then sailed on to Bar Harbor for a three-day stop.

He spent much of his time with wealthy summer residents. This caused a bit of a stir among the year-rounders, which Taft tamped down by giving a speech on the town bandstand.

“The three days that have passed in Bar Harbor will be red letter days in my life,” he told the crowd. “The air is like champagne in a Prohibition state, and without the uncomfortable consequences that follow imbibing that liquor.”

However, Taft’s visit to Mount Desert Island was not without trouble. He shot a 23 on a single hole during one round of golf when he got stuck in a sand trap. On the same course, the 300-pound-plus president tripped and sprained an ankle.

Taft at his summer White House

And, when he spoke to a crowd at the Hancock House in Ellsworth, pickpockets made off with hundreds of dollars from unsuspecting Mainers who came to hear him speak.

Most of the spots Taft visited are either gone or in private hands, but a few survive. The Bangor House Hotel is still at the corner of Main and Union streets, though it’s now housing. Taft participated in services at the stately Ellsworth Congregational Church. He took tea at the Jordan Pond House and the Kebo Country Club — the scene of Taft’s rough game — remains open to this day.

Hyannis Port, Mass.

The Kennedy Big House

The summer cottage that Joseph P. Kennedy rented in Hyannis Port in 1926 would eventually become the summer White House. Hyannis then (and now) belonged to the Irish Riviera.

The waterfront house had commanding views of Nantucket Harbor. Kennedy bought it in 1928 and set about enlarging and improving it for his growing family. It had six bedrooms and four servants’ rooms on the second floor, a wine cellar in the shape of a ship’s hull and a motion picture theater in the basement.

In 1956, Joseph Kennedy’s son John bought a smaller home of his own near the big house. In 1959, the youngest child, Edward, bought a house next to the other two in 1959. He sold it to his brother Robert and his wife, Ethel, in 1961, and later bought another home nearby.

John F. Kennedy used the compound as his headquarters for his 1960 campaign for president. He then used it as the summer White House during his presidency.

The Kennedy family at Hyannis Port, 1931

The main house was recently donated to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The compound can’t be visited, but it can be seen from the tour boats that leave from Hyannis.

To see rare photos of the Kennedy family at the Hyannis Port compound, click here.

Cornish, N.H.

Harlakenden House

Woodrow Wilson spent several weeks in the summers of 1913 through 1915 at Harlakenden, a country estate in Cornish, N.H. Wilson leased his summer White House from Winston Churchill – the American Winston Churchill, a writer who lost a race for governor of New Hampshire in 1906.

Harlakenden sat on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River. Cornish was the center of an art colony of about 100 artists, writers and politicians from about 1895 to the end of World War I. It stretched from Windsor, Vt., to Plainfield, N.H. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the central figure in the colony, which included Ethel Barrymore, Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Isadora Duncan, Maxwell Perkins and Maxfield Parrish.

On Sept. 12, 1913, a play called Sanctuary: A Bird Masque was performed in Cornish with Wilson, his wife and the British ambassador in the audience. Miss Eleanor Wilson played the lead role and Miss Margaret Wilson sang the opening song, The Hermit Thrush. The play’s theme was the senseless slaughter of birds for frivolous purposes.

The occasion was the dedication of the Meriden, N.H., bird sanctuary – one of the first in the nation.

At the time, the Underwood Tariff Bill was in Congress . Bird-lovers everywhere wanted to ensure the bill included a ban on importation of bird feathers for decorative purposes. The play helped keep the heat on. Wilson returned from his summer White House early because the tariff bill had passed, with the language about birds intact.

Harlakenden burned to the ground, but the Cornish art colony survives as the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

Newport, R.I.

Eisenhower House

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, decamped to the Naval Base in Newport, R.I. There he dealt with the crisis over school integration in Little Rock, Ark.

He also summered in Newport during his presidency in 1958 and 1960. At first in 1958 Eisenhower 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. So he moved to a mansion at Fort Adams for two summers in Newport.

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.

It now belongs to Fort Adams State Park, and you can rent it for weddings and social events. For more information click here.

Plymouth Notch, Vt.

Plymouth Notch

Calvin Coolidge was 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.

Though Coolidge spent most of his adult life in Northampton, Mass., he often visited his family home. It is 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. In the summer of 1924, a dance hall nearby served as his office in the summer of 1924.

Today Coolidge’s birthplace and surrounding buildings are 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.

Brigadoon as a Summer White House

The Coolidge homestead is such a throwback to the way Vermont used to be that some people call it “Vermont’s Brigadoon.”

Coolidge and his sons in Plymouth Notch, 1916

Coolidge expressed his feelings about his home state in an eloquent speech that followed the disastrous flood of 1927.

“I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.^”

Photo of the Thimble Islands by JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49575458.

This story about the summer White House in each state was updated in 2022.

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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 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.

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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