The Presidents’ Plates

On a historical tour of part of the Wabash and Erie Canal, our group stopped at the preserved home of a prominent citizen. I spent most of the time there looking at the china cabinets. With my little bit of knowledge, I recognized flow blue, ironstone and transferware from the Nineteenth Century. There were many colors and patterns in the collection, and I began thinking of the dishes chosen by first families.

President Grant’s table service.

If you were fortunate enough to be a guest for dinner at the White House sometime in the past 200 years, you would have been eating from some pretty special plates. At first, the china used for visitors was a mixture of English and Chinese imports. Then, during President James Monroe’s administration, the first official presidential dinner service was ordered.

Caroline Harrison preferred Limoges.

In 1889 First Lady Caroline Harrison, who was a history buff, had the ambition to save for posterity the presidential china that’d been used. A few years later when William McKliney was president, a writer named Abby Baker researched it in great detail. She became involved in acquiring and preserving the place settings until her death in 1923.

Wedgewood was Edith Roosevelts’ choice, after an Ohio manufacturer hesitated at the size of the order.

Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt ordered two cabinets made for china which had come back through auctions and donations. These were seen by White House visitors at the east end of the mansion. What was to be done with damaged pieces, though? There were plenty of those, which Mrs. R directed to be broken and scattered in the Potomac River. Mrs. Wilson oversaw the completion of the current China Room in 1917.

The Eisenhower’s service plates complemented previous designs.

During the Eisenhower era, new cabinets were made; Mamie’s service plates were rimmed with a wide gold band that could be used with any of the previous designs. Jacqueline Kennedy was instrumental in creating Public Law 87-286, which made the dishware “inalienable and property of the White House.”

The China Room in 1975. It was established during the First World War. (housebeautiful.com)

Today newlyweds don’t dwell mucn choosing good china for company. Many of my generation hang on to ours and the memories that gleaming cups, saucers, plates and a few goblets bring back. For Americans, presidential china does the same. We hope that it continues for a long, long time.

Unless otherwise noted the photos are from architecturaldigest.com. Information comes from that site and from whitehousehistory.org.

A First Lady Who Might Have Been

Jessie Benton Fremont (National Park Service)

Several blogs past I wrote about some “also rans” for United States President, which could lead to speculation of “what if” the loser had won. I overlooked at least one name, that of John Fremont. He isn’t well-known or taught much about in history classes, although his experience and leadership matched many of the time.

His wife, Jessie, most certainly would have been an impressive first lady.

Jessie Benton Fremont was the daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, (not to be confused with an artist of the same name) who is taught about in history classes. He was a senator from Missouri before the Civil War, an advocate for western expansion and an opponent of slavery in the territories, and he let his daughter tag along with him when he had business at the Capitol and Executive Mansion.

At 17, while attending school in Washington, she eloped with Lieutenant John C. Fremont, ten years older. There was a period of estrangement between the two generations but eventually the Fremonts and the Bentons reconciled, and John became active in exploring the West with Kit Carson. Jessie stayed home and wrote for newspapers, also becoming well-known.

Jesie held a salon of writers, artists and spiritual leaders when they lived in San Francisco in the early 1860s. (National Park Service)

John became a senator from California, and then received the nomination for President in 1856 from the new Republican Party. Unmarried opponent Buchanan did not have an asset like Jessie. Crowds called her name and sang a song about her to the tune of Yankee Doodle. But “Mr. Fremont,” as she called him, lost, unable to sway the southern states. A newspaperman said they all regretted that she would not be “Mrs. President.”

Parents of five children, two of whom died in infancy, they moved to St. Louis during the Civil War where John was in command of the Western Department. But he ended a declaration of martial law by freeing slaves held by rebels in Missouri, which preceded the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was not happy. Even though Jessie traveled to Washington to plead the case with the President, he fired her husband. She also worked with the Soldier’s Relief Society and the Western Sanitation Commission which were accepted roles for a woman.

With husband, John C. Fremont. (www.calisphere.org)

The family came into hard times when John’s railroad speculations failed. After his death Jessie lived another twelve years, aided by a widow’s army pension and her narratives, which were as popular as ever.

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One can see why readers anticipated her articles:

I look up at the little water-color which is my résumé of that time of severance from all I held indispensable to happiness—it was made for me on the spot, and gives my tent under the tall cotton-woods, already browned and growing bare with the coming winter winds.
Mr. Fremont was to make a winter crossing of the mountains, and I went with him in to his starting-point, the Delaware Indian reservation on the frontier of Missouri, to return when he left, and remain at home in Washington until my time came to start in March. Of everything in the Centennial Exhibition, I think nothing interested me so much as the display made by Kansas. It seemed so few years since I had been there, when only a small settlement marked the steamboat landing where now Kansas City stands. Looking at its silk manufacturers, its produce of not only essentials, but luxuries, it was hard to realize the untracked prairie of my time, with only Indians and wolves for figures.

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My blog post receiving the most responses has been one about “little orange books” (subsequently with other covers) pubished by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. They were prevalent in elementary school libraries in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Many said these adapted biographies sparked a lifelong interest in history, as they did for me.

I remember reading Jessie Fremont’s story. One incident that stood out was when she befriended a girl at school whom everyone else shunned. That reflects the character of one who would have, by all accounts, been a knockout of a First Lady.

Sources:

http://www.theatlantic.com, http://www.tile.loc.gov, http://www.civilwar.vt.edu, http://www.nps.gov, http://www.americanhistoryblog.org, http://www.historynet.com

The Atlantic piece is an excerpt from a book about the Fremonts, Imperfect Union, by Steve Inskeep, co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition.

The Washingtons in New York

Everybody thinks of George and Martha Washington living graciously at their Mount Vernon country home. But while he was President, they had to live in northern cities. Especially interesting is their time in Yankee New York.

Library of Congress

The first presidential mansion was the three-story home above on Cherry Street in New York City, which had a population at the time of 33,000.

University of Southern Florida

The next year, they moved to Broadway Street to a home where there were two drawing rooms for hosting weekly “levees.”

Martha Washington was ill at the time of the first inauguration in April of 1789, staying behind in Virginia. Apparently George dined alone that evening but attended the ball and enjoyed dancing the minuet. Soon his wife and grandchildren, Nellie and Washy, joined him. Congress bought new mahogany furniture for the house.

Business of state was conducted at the Fraunces Tavern, where George was assembling the first Cabinet: Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; and Henry Knox, Secretary of War. Our first President signed the Bill of Rights here. Ironically, the Fraunces was the site where, a dozen years before during the war, an attempt was made on the general’s life. One account is that a young girl found out about some poisoned peas on his plate and threw them out the window.

But in 1789 both George and the new government were up and running. He held public receptions on Tuesday afternoons while Martha had hers at 8 p.m. on Fridays. at which they liked to serve lemonade and ice cream.

Although George enjoyed taking walks in Battery Park, he also rode in a carriage pulled by six horses. He often went to the theatre.

Many of Martha’s peers had compliments for her. She was affable, gentle and benevolent. Unlike some that followed, she didn’t act as an intermediary between factions or gather and disseminate information, said Cokie Roberts, herself a daughter of two politicians. “I could never keep quiet as she does,” Abigail Adams revealed in a letter to a friend.

George, Martha and their grandchildren Washy and Nellie. mountvernon.org

In 1790 the family moved to Philadelphia, where they and their servants spent the remaining seven years of two terms in office.

“Our dwellings in New York and Philadelphia were not home, only a sojourn,” the relieved first lady said when she returned to Mount Vernon, and added that she was content to be “an old-fashioned Virginia housekeeper.”

Sadly, the retirement did not last long. George Washington passed away on December 14, 1799, just before the dawn of a new century. The previous one had been hallmarked on this side of the Atlantic by his great efforts.

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I had fun researching this one! Facts come from Cokie Roberts’ book Ladies of Liberty (2008), John Kaminsky’s book Founders on the Founders (2008), smithsonianmag.com, nyhistory.org, ushistory.org, washingtonpost.com, mountvernon.org, frauncestavernmuseum.org, and phillymag.com.

Losing Quentin

One hundred years ago today in France, an American first lieutenant died in a dogfight.   He was just twenty years old and had been trying hard to pilot his plane into the action of World War 1.  On July 14, 1918, close to the village of Chamery, he did.

http://www.smithsonianmag.org

He was Theodore and Edith Roosevelt’s son, Quentin.  The youngest of six children, he was said to have been the one most like his father.   They shared the same vitality, originality and sense of humor, according to author Hermann Hagedorn.   Born just before the Spanish-American War, Quentin Roosevelt spent much of his boyhood in Washington.

Quentin’s antics with his friends in the executive mansion were later described in a book called The White House Gang.   They played hide-and-seek in the attic.  They re-enacted famous military battles in unused rooms.  They made faces at the president in his carriage, and threw spitballs at Andrew Jackson’s portrait.  TR joined in many of these (not the spitball episode, though; the “trial” for which he presided over).

http://www.gettyimages.com

“Quentikins” was three when his father became president and almost twelve when he left.  He attended public school but sometimes his teacher didn’t know what to do with him, as a letter from TR to her reveals.  Charlie Taft, son of the secretary of war and the next president, was his best friend.

His mother called him her “fine little bad boy.”  In the summers on Long Island he competed with his older brothers Ted, Kermit, and Archie, joining in their recklessness.  He loved repairing mechanical things, especially motorcycles.  He was a New York Yankees fan.  And he completed his first year at Harvard before joining the Army Air Corps.

http://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org

Before leaving for France, Quentin asked Flora Payne Whitney, of the Vanderbilt family, to marry him.  She wanted desperately to join him there but was refused permission from the Wilson administration.

He and his fiancé wrote many tender letters across the ocean.  “Fouf,” he called her.

http://www.nps.org

http://www.wikipedia.org

In his French Nieuport 28 decorated with newspaper comic strip character “Doc Yak” he downed an enemy plane on July 10, and subsequently wrote the news to his parents.  Four mornings later he went up again behind German lines.  A member of his squadron saw a plane shot down, but because of the fog did not realize it was Quentin’s until after he landed.

Theodore and Edith continued receiving letters their son had written before he died.  They requested that he remain buried where he fell, in the place German officers conducted an honor ceremony.  A fence was built around the grave which which stood for many years, creating a pilgrimage opportunity for soldiers and French citizens alike.

His mother had a memorial fountain and stone marker made for the site, which she visited later.  Not so for his father, who died six  months after Quentin, partly from a broken heart.  Flora, who was devastated, eventually married and took over leadership of the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York founded by her mother.

http://www.ralietravels.wordpress.com

In the 1950s, the family requested that Quentin’s body be moved to the American cemetery in Normandy adjoining his brother, Ted, who suffered a heart attack in the Second World War.  Ted, a general, had been the oldest soldier on Utah Beach in the invasion.

In late 1918 the name Quentin Roosevelt II had been given to Ted’s newborn son.  He would also tragically die in a plane crash, over Hong Kong in 1948.  He had had a family  —  one of his daughters, Susan, married former Massachusetts governor William Weld.  One of their sons is named Quentin, while several other members of the Roosevelt family have been given Quentin for a middle name.

Losing Quentin is still hard to read about a century later.  The “big, bright boy” will always be so in our memories.  Who knows where his career might have led, or what his family-to-be might have accomplished?  The same may be asked of the other sixteen million military personnel and civilians who lost their lives in the Great War.

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Recommended reading: Quentin and Flora by Chip Bishop, CreateSpace Publishing, 2014.  I met this author at a gathering of the Theodore Roosevelt Association before his untimely death.  It is a masterful book.  Chip was the great-nephew of Joseph Buckland Bishop, whom Theodore Roosevelt authorized to write his biography.

 

 

 

 

Nabby

Abigail Adams in the early years of her marriage.

Manager.  Correspondent.  Editorial Writer.  Wife.  Mother.  Grandmother.  Advocate for women’s rights.  While any of these words might describe a woman of today, they also hallmarked the life of our second first lady at the end of the Eighteenth Century.

I recently looked into some biographies to portray Abigail Adams for a couple of fifth grade classrooms.  The daughter of a minister and his wife, “Nabby” Smith was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1744.  Typical of the time, she and her sisters weren’t sent to school as their brother was, but absorbed reading lessons at home.  Nabby’s father’s library, most of all writings of Shakespeare, Milton and Pope, was a source of many hours of happiness for her.  Family discussion of current events formed the basis for the opinions she developed early on; the French and Indian War began when she was ten.

By seventeen when she became acquainted with John Adams, Abigail was a well-rounded young woman.  She married the country lawyer, ten years her senior, at nineteen.  They set up housekeeping in Braintree (now Quincy) on the Adams farm, in a house next to his mother’s.

While John was away in Boston or at circuit court, Abigail remained at home to tend things.  She was by all accounts a very hard worker.  The couple had six children, four of whom grew to adulthood.  Their first was a girl also named Nabby, their second, a boy named John Quincy.  By 1770 the young family was in the midst of an embroiled colonial relationship with England.  John was called upon to defend the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.

At the time of Lexington and Concord in 1775, he wrote to her to “flee to the woods” in case of danger.  During the Battle of Bunker Hill, she took John Quincy by the hand and climbed Penn’s Hill in the distance to watch.  A good friend, whose children were in her care, was killed in the melee.

John represented Massachusetts at the First Continental Congress, and was on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence at the Second.  “Remember the ladies,” she told him, “and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.  Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands….we will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice.”

She was adamant that girls be given the same opportunities for education as boys.  “How can the republic produce heroes, statesmen and philosophers if it does not produce learned women?”

All the while she was writing, she was managing the farm.  She bought and sold property, got rid of an overseer who wouldn’t do his work, and shared in the physical labor of preserving food and making clothing.  From their sheep she carded wool, spun the yarn, wove the yarn into cloth, then cut and sewed it.

In 1783 she was able to visit John in France for several months, while he worked as ambassador and John Quincy served as his secretary.  The portrait above was painted there.

John and Abigail, who considered themselves best friends, exchanged over 1,000 letters during their marriage, but this is one she wrote to her sister.

John Adams served as Vice President under George Washington for eight years, during which time she helped Martha host public receptions, in New York and then Philadelphia.  John was elected President in 1796; for the last four months of his term in November of 1800 the first couple moved into an unfinished President’s House in the swampy new town of Washington, D.C.  Abigail famously hung her laundry in the East Room.  Less well-known is the fact that at least one politician called her “Mrs. President.”

It had not been a contented time for the couple, with Federalists and Anti-Federalists at each other’s throats.  John’s friendship with Thomas Jefferson was severely strained (she was able to help repair it at the end of her life).  Abigail, never one to curb her outlook, had to be careful.  “My pen must grow cautious,” she wrote.  “There is envy and hatred and uncharitableness in all three branches of government.”

Finally, they were together again at home in Massachusetts.  The new state was enormous, including what we know as Maine until 1820.  Just as had happened in the original colony of Carolina earlier, the center of government was far from those living in the north.

Abigail and John enjoyed following the success of John Quincy’s political career in their retirement, and also growing number of grandchildren, some of whom stayed with them.  She would live to be 73.  Her husband, though, reached 90, passing away on July 4, 1826, as did Thomas Jefferson.  It was the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

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As I straightened the bow on my white lace cap, my audience had questions.  “What games did your children play?”

“Some the same as you, tag and hide-and-seek.  They had marbles made of clay.  And they played an outdoor game called quoits, a lot like horseshoes.”

“Did you own slaves?” they wanted to know.

“No, our family was firm against it.  In fact, the issue of slavery almost stopped our country from starting in the first place.”

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“I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for liberty cannot be equally strong in those who have deprived their fellow creatures of theirs,” Abigail Adams stated.  But in order to unite, the northern states had to compromise with those in the south.  It would cause a civil war on American soil not quite a hundred years after she and so many others worked to form the new nation.

 

Images from http://www.firstladies.org