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Article
The White House Collection: Reminders of 1814
When the President’s House was consumed by fire in 1814, furnishings purchased over twenty-five years by the United States government for Presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were lost. Among them were the eighteenth-century objects from the two residences occupied by President Washington in New York in 1789 and 1790 and from the Philadelphia home in wh
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Article
The White House Collection: The Truman Interiors
On March 27, 1952, President and Mrs. Truman returned to a freshly renovated White House after living at Blair House since November 1948. They were delighted with the success of the three-and-one- half-year project in spite of all its problems and disruptions. A week later they welcomed their first house guests, Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and on April 22 the
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Article
The White House Collection: George Washington
“It is of very great importance to fix the taste of our Country properly, and I think your Example will go so far in that respect. It is therefore my Wish that every Thing about you should be substantially good and majestically plain; made to endure” wrote Gouverneur Morris, the American businessman and diplomat in Paris, to President George Washington in 1
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Article
The White House Collection Research Sources in the Office of the Curator
A house more thoroughly documented than the White House is difficult to imagine. Historians and students of White House history seeking primary source materials on the late-18th-century origin, design, and construction of the building as well as its 19th-century reconstruction and renovations, changing interior spaces, and purchases of art and furnishings, must turn to the rich resources of the
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Bio
Sarah Yorke Jackson
Sarah Yorke was born ca. 1803/05 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to parents Peter and Mary.1 Relatives raised Sarah after she was orphaned as a child.2 She married Andrew Jackson Jr., the adopted son of President Andrew Jackson, in 1831.3 Sarah lived at Jackson’s plantation, The Hermitage, and oversaw the operation of the household and the enslaved laborers there, during his presidency. She an
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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
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
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
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
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884, in New York City. She was the oldest child of Elliot Roosevelt and Anna Hall. She lost both parents by the age of ten.1 Following the death of her mother, she was raised by her maternal grandmother, Mary Hall, and later attended a private London finishing school called Allenswood Academy. In 1902, Eleanor returned
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Bio
Grace Coolidge
Grace Anna Goodhue was born on January 3, 1879, in Burlington, Vermont. She was the only child of Andrew and Lemira Goodhue. Following her graduation from Burlington High School in 1897, Grace attended the University of Vermont, and joined the women’s fraternity Pi Beta Phi. Following her graduation in 1902, Grace entered training at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts. Sh
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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