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Bio
Calvin Coolidge
At 2:30 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that Warren G. Harding was dead and he was president. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible. Coolidge was “distinguished for character more than for he
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Bio
Mary Lincoln
Mary Todd was born on December 13, 1818, in Lexington, Kentucky. She was the fourth of seven children born to Robert Smith Todd and Eliza Ann Parker Todd. Her mother Eliza died when Mary was six years old. Her father, a wealthy businessman and slave owner, remarried Elizabeth Humphreys in 1826. The following year, Mary began attending Ward’s Academy and at age fo
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Bio
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln warned the South in his first Inaugural Address, “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you....You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it.” Lincoln consider
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Bio
Eliza Johnson
Eliza McCardle was born on October 4, 1810. According to the Johnson family bible, Eliza’s birthplace was Greeneville, Tennessee; however, other sources claim she was born elsewhere in the state.1 Eliza’s father, John McCardle, was a shoemaker of Scottish descent. Her mother, Sarah Phillips McCardle, managed the household, and her ancestors may have come from Plymouth, Massachusetts.2 Eliza’s father died s
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Bio
Michelle Obama
Michelle Robinson was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 17, 1964. Her father, Fraser, was a pump operator, and her mother, Marian, raised Michelle and her brother Craig at home.1 After graduating from public school, Michelle earned her B.A. in sociology from Princeton University in 1985 and then attended Harvard Law School, receiving her Juris Doctor three years later. Michelle then returned
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Bio
Barack Obama
When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he became the first African American to hold the office. Obama faced major challenges during his two-term tenure in office. His primary policy achievements included health care reform, economic stimulus, banking reform and consumer protections, and a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy preventing lesbian and gay Americans from serving
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Bio
Caroline Harrison
Caroline Scott was born in Oxford, Ohio, on October 1, 1832 to educator Mary Neal Scott and John Witherspoon Scott, a Presbyterian minister and president of Oxford Female Institute. Caroline, or “Carrie,” studied languages, music, and drawing at the institute, graduating in 1852.1 She also met Benjamin Harrison, a student at nearby Miami University, while in school. They later married on October 20, 1853.2 In 1854, the
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Bio
Benjamin Harrison
Nominated for president on the eighth ballot at the 1888 Republican convention, Benjamin Harrison conducted one of the first "front-porch" campaigns, delivering short speeches to delegates that visited him in Indianapolis. As he was only 5 feet, 6 inches tall, Democrats called him "Little Ben"; Republicans replied he was big enough to wear the hat of his grandfather, "Old Tippecanoe."Born on August 20, 1833
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Bio
Ellen Arthur
Chester Alan Arthur’s beloved “Nell” died of pneumonia on January 12, 1880. That November, when he was elected vice president, he was still mourning her bitterly. His grief was the more poignant because she was only 42 and her death sudden. Just two days earlier she had attended a benefit concert in New York City—while he was busy with politics in Albany—a
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Bio
Chester A. Arthur
Dignified, tall, and handsome, with clean-shaven chin and side-whiskers, Chester A. Arthur looked like a president.The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Arthur was born on October 5, 1829 in Fairfield, Vermont. He graduated from Union College in 1848, taught school, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law in New York City. Early in the Civil
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Bio
Mamie Eisenhower
Mamie Geneva Doud was born on November 14, 1896, in Boone, Iowa. She was the daughter of John Sheldon Doud and Elivera Mathilda Carlson Doud. The Doud family later moved to Colorado, eventually settling in Denver. Mamie attended local public schools and graduated from the Wolcott School, a private school for girls in 1915. That fall she met Second Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower,
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Bio
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Bringing to the presidency his vast experience as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight Eisenhower oversaw the growth of postwar prosperity. In a rare boast he said, “The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration.... By God, it didn’t just happen—I’ll tell you that!” B