You Might Also Like
-
Scholarship
A Prominent Early White House Neighbor
When Commodore Stephen Decatur and his wife, Susan, moved into their new three story brick home across from the White House in 1819, they desired to link their futures with that of the growing national capital. It is no coincidence that they chose to reside in such close proximity to the Executive Mansion.One of the nation’s first post-Revolutionary War he
-
Scholarship
The Dolley Madison House on Lafayette Square
The Dolley Madison House, a yellow structure on the corner of H Street and Madison Place in “The President’s Neighborhood” surrounding Lafayette Square near the White House, was built in 1818-1819 by Richard Cutts, a congressman from Massachusetts who was married to Dolley Madison’s sister Anna. The mortgage passed to President James Madison, and, after his death, to his wife
-
Scholarship
Lady Bird Johnson's Floral Legacy
Few first ladies have been so attuned to the natural beauty inside and outside the White House as First Lady Claudia Johnson, or “Lady Bird.” Famed for her environmental work, she brought a sense of the floral to everything she did, from wide-ranging legislation to small touches of hospitality.Mrs. Johnson’s White House entertaining style often included an homage to the
-
Scholarship
The Life and Presidency of Herbert Hoover
The 2016 White House Christmas ornament honors the administration of the thirty-first president of the United States Herbert Hoover, who served from 1929 to 1933. The ornament is inspired by the fire engines that responded to the 1929 Christmas Eve fire at the White House and the toy trucks presented to children by the Hoovers the following Christmas. Crafted from shiny brass plated with
-
Scholarship
Official White House China: From the 18th to the 21st Centuries
The house in which the President of the United States lives has always had a great fascination for American citizens who have come to feel they share in the ownership of the Executive Mansion. Throughout its more than 200 year history, the style in which the house is furnished has been determined—to varying degrees—by the money appropriated by Congress from
-
Scholarship
A Very Hoover Holiday
Christmas of 1929 was a snowy season in the nation’s capital. President Herbert Hoover and First Lady Lou Hoover planned to celebrate the holidays without their family, including their grandchildren Peggy Ann and Peter who lived in California. The grandchildren were Herbert and Lou’s pride and joy, and Mrs. Hoover shopped around town at the “five and dime stores” to buy g
-
Scholarship
The Revolutionary Inauguration of Thomas Jefferson
Nearly two decades after his election to the presidency, Thomas Jefferson elaborated on the significance of this triumph to his friend Spencer Roane. The “revolution of 1800,” he wrote, “was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76.” This transformation was “not effected indeed by the sword…but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage
-
Scholarship
Inauguration of 1861
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the United States. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed soon after. In the midst of an unprecedented sectional crisis, President Abraham Lincoln entered office on March 4, 1861, to assume leadership of an anxious and worried nation. The Baltimore Sun commented that the “close of an old and the beginning of a new administration of
-
Scholarship
Paul Jennings
Paul Jennings was born in 1799 at Montpelier, the Virginia estate of James and Dolley Madison. His mother, an enslaved woman of African and Native American descent, told him that his father was the local English trader Benjamin Jennings. While Paul had no documented relationship with Benjamin and probably never met him, he did adopt the ‘Jennings’ surname as his own. As a
-
Scholarship
The Life of Eugene Allen
Eugene Allen served in the White House for 34 years. Assisting eight presidents, Allen’s top priority was to make the White House a comfortable residence for each chief executive and his family. Allen was born in 1919 on a plantation farm near Scottsville in central Virginia.1 During his youth, he worked as a waiter at a resort in Virginia and at a
-
Scholarship
Martha Johnson Patterson: Hostess of the Andrew Johnson White House
Of her family’s role in the White House in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Martha Johnson Patterson, daughter of President Andrew Johnson, admitted, “We are plain people, from the mountains of Tennessee, called here for a short time by a national calamity.”1 One of the five children of President Andrew Johnson and First Lady Eliza McCardle Johnson, Martha
-
Scholarship
A Widower's Hostess
When President Martin Van Buren assumed office on March 4th, 1837, there was no woman to assume the role of first lady. His wife, Hannah Van Buren, had contracted an illness and died in February 1819, years before he took office.1 President Van Buren hired staff to serve in the absence of a White House hostess. Census records from 1840 list the numerous