PRESIDENTIAL HOMES & RESIDENCES

THE WHITE HOUSE

1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE NW

WASHINGTON. DC

All but one of the forty-three Presidents of the United States lived in the White House, the official residence and principal workplace of the Presidents of the United States. The exception was the first, George Washington. It was built between 1792 and 1800. The structure was not ready for occupancy until later in John Adams only term, and even then not all the rooms were finished. The Executive Mansion was not then called the White House. It was originally referred to as the "President's Palace," "Presidential Mansion," or President's House." Allegedly, the building received its present name after the structure was rebuilt after it was set ablaze by the British in 1814 during the War of 1812. The exterior was painted white to mask the burn damage it had suffered.

Throughout the years, the building has had additions and modifications ordered by various Presidents. Today the six story structure includes the Executive Residence, The West Wing, which contains the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room, and the East Wing, the location of the office of the First Lady and White House Social Secretary. Nine proposals were made for the construction of the Executive Mansion. The winning entry was that of James Hoban of Charleston, South Carolina. Hoban's design was influenced by portions of Leister House, in Dublin, Ireland, later the seat of the Irish parliament.

MOUNT VERNON

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA

Located near Alexandria, Virginia, Mount Vernon was the plantation home of George Washington, the first President of the United States. When owned by George's father Augustine Washington, the estate was known as Little Hunting Creek Plantation. When George's older half-brother, Lawrence Washington inherited the property, he renamed Mount Vernon to honor his commanding officer in the British Navy, Vice Admiral Edward Vernon. Upon Lawrence's death without issue, his will provided that his widow Anne should own a life estate at Mount Vernon, with the remainder going to George. When Anne died, the entire estate passed to George. The remains of George and his wife Martha are entombed on the grounds at Mount Vernon. The property consists of 500 acres. The house was built in stages - the northern portion was expanded several times during its history.

PEACEFIELD

QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS

Also known as the Old House, Peacefield was the home and farm owned by the second President of the United States, John Adams, as well as by other members of the Adams family. The oldest portion of the house was built in 1731 by Leonard Vassal. It was acquired by John And Abigail Adams in 1787 after its loyalist owners abandoned it during the Revolutionary War. While John was serving as Vice President and President, Abigail ran the house and farm. Claiming the structure felt like "a wren's nest," had in greatly expanded, with additions built in the Georgian style.

MONTICELLO

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

Monticello is the estate of the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. He designed and redesigned the neoclassical house, based on principles established by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Jefferson had it built and rebuilt over a period of forty years. He created the botanical gardens of the property as a showplace, a source of food, and an experimental laboratory of flowers and plants from all over the world. The plantation consisted of 5,000 acres. When Jefferson died in 1826, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph inherited Monticello. She was forced to sell the property to pay off debts and eventually came to be owned by the Uriah P. Levy family. In 1879, his nephew Jefferson Monroe Levy had Monticello repaired, restored and preserved. The house is now operated as a museum by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

MONTPELIER

ORANGE, VIRGINIA

In 1723, Ambrose Madison, the grandfather of the fourth President of the United States, James Madison, and his brother-in-law Thomas Chew, were deeded 4,675 acres in the newly opened Piedmont territory of Virginia. Ambrose called his plantation complex, Mount Pleasant, and when it became known as Montpelier is uncertain. Some believe that it was named for Montpellier, the Medieval French term for "Mount of the Pilgrim. Montpellier, France is a spa resort known for its pure healthy air, as is Madison's Montpelier. The property remained in the Madison family for 120 years, until James' wife Dolley had to sell it to pay off debts. It was acquired by members of the du Pont family in 1901. In 1984, Marion du Pont Scott transferred the estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. a $25 million restoration program of the house and property was begun in 2002 and completed in 2008.

ASH LAWN - HIGHLAND

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

Highland farm was owned by the fifth President of the United States and his wife Elizabeth Kortright Monroe. Located in Ablemarle County, Virginia, it was their residence from 1799 to 1823. After their death, the name of the farm was changed from "Highland" to "Ash Lawn. Today, both names are used for the 535-acre working farm, which was bequeathed to the College of William and Mary in 1974 by Jay Winston Johns to operate as a "historic shrine for the education of the general public.

BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

141 FRANKLIN STREET, QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS

John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, was born in the saltbox house used as a home an office of his father John Adams, who was born in a similar saltbox only 75 feet away from the one shown in the picture. JQA inherited Peacefield from his father and the Quincy estate on the seashore from his maternal grandparents.

THE HERMITAGE

4580 RACHEL'S LANE, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Despite being the first President of the United States not from the aristocracy, Andrew Jackson was able to transform a modest country farm into a 1,000-acre plantation that he named The Hermitage. The mansion was constructed during the period 1819 to 1821. The original section was brick Federal style Ante-bellum house. In 1831 a major remodeling added flanking one story wings and a two-story portico with ten Doric columns. When fire heavily damaged the house in 1834, the entrance facade was built with the appearance of a Greek temple, complete with six two-story columns with modified Corinthian capitals arranged across the front porch. Since the home was opened as a museum in 1889, approximately 16 million visitors have toured The Hermitage.

LINDENWALD

OLD POST ROAD, KINDERHOOK, NEW YORK

Named for the numerous Linden trees on the estate, Lindenwald was the home of Martin Van Buren, the eighth President of the United States. The original house on the property was built in 1797. Through neglect, the house and property had seriously deteriorated by the time Van Buren paid $14,000 for it in 1839. He set about making his Hudson Valley estate into a working farm. By 1845, he had more than 220 acres in crops, as well as formal flower gardens. Van Buren made elaborate modifications of the large two-story brick house. He removed the central stairway from the entrance hall to create two large rooms on each level. A four-story brick tower, a central gable, attic dormers and a porch were added. Then the house was painted yellow. The Martin Van Buren National Historic Site consists of 22 acres of Van Buren's holdings, plus the mansion.

GROUSELAND

3 WEST SCOTT STREET, VINCENNES, INDIANA

William Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States built a substantial brick home in 1804, which he named Grouseland, because his estate abounded with these game birds. He lived there , while serving as governor of Indiana Territory, until he left to take command of American forces in the old Northwest during the War of 1812. The blended plantation, mansion and fortress is located along the Wabash River. The building contains 26 rooms and 13 fireplaces. Because of threats of Indian raids, the exterior walls are 18 inches thick with portholes for sharpshooters. Grouseland has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public. With the outbreak of the War of 1812, Harrison moved to his family to a farm his wife inherited at North Bend, Ohio.

SHERWOOD FOREST

14501 JOHN TYLER HIGHWAY, CHARLES CITY, VIRGINIA

Sherwood Forest Plantation, a Georgian clapboard, was the home of the tenth President of the United States, John Tyler, from 1842 until his death in 1862. While open to the public, the 1,200-acre plantation has been the continuous residence of the Tyler family since he purchased it. Tyler expanded the original 1780 frame house into one of the longest private residences in Virginia - 300 feet long but only one room deep. Originally called Walnut Grove, Tyler renamed it when Henry Clay accused the President of being an outlaw retiring to his Sherwood Forest - a reference to Robin Hood.

ONLY SURVIVING HOME OF JAMES KNOX POLK

301 WEST 7TH STREET, COLUMBIA, TENNESSEE

This Federal style home was built by the father of the eleventh President of the United States James Knox Polk about 1816. Except for the White House it is the only surviving residence of Polk. It can be visited by the public. Today it hosts over 1000 objects that once belonged to the President and Mrs. Polk, including furniture, paintings and White House china. The President's final residence - a mansion in downtown Nashville - was torn down in 1901.

CYPRESS GROVE

NEAR NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI

As a career military man, Zachary Taylor, the twelfth president of the United States, had many residences. Born in Virginia as an infant he was taken to Kentucky. He spent the first twenty-three years of his life on his father's Springfield farm in Louisville, Kentucky. The first home he owned was in Baton, Rouge, Louisiana, bought in 1840. The next year he purchased a 2000-acre plantation on the Mississippi River just above of Natchez.

MILLARD FILLMORE'S CASTLE

NIAGARA SQUARE AT DELAWARE AVENUE, BUFFALO, NEW YORK

In 1823, Millard Fillmore, who would become the thirteenth President of the United States, opened a law office in East Aurora, New York. With the help of friends he built a modest house on Franklin Street (since moved to 24 Shearer Avenue, where it is owned and maintained by the Aurora Historical Society). Besides the White House it is the only surviving home of the President. After his presidency, widower Fillmore married a wealthy, childless widow. They purchased the long-fronted stately Tudor Gothic mansion depicted in the post card. After Fillmore's death, his sons merged the mansion with another to become the Hotel Fillmore, later to be called the Castle Inn. It was demolished to make way for the Statler Towers Hotel in 2002.

PIERCE HOMESTEAD

HILLSBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States spent half his life in the mansion built in 1804 by General Benjamin Pierce, hero of the Revolutionary War. The Homestead is operated by the Hillsborough Historical Society. The Greek Revival styled Pierce Manse located in Concord, New Hampshire is the only home ever owed and lived in by President Pierce. It was saved from leveling by being moved from its original site on Montgomery Street to 14 Horseshoe Pond Road in 1967. Both houses are open to tours by appointment at certain times of the year.

WHEATLAND

1120 MARIETTA AVENUE, LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA

James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States, was born in a log cabin, which is located on the campus of Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. The site is open to the public. He resided in various Inns in Lancaster, before moving into a house at 42 king Street. In 1948, He purchased a large Federal style house and 22 acres of land near Lancaster in 1848. Wheatland consists of a two and one half central section flanked by three-story wings. There are 17 rooms in all. A Doric columned porch sits in front of the main section of the house. From a long veranda in the rear, Buchanan could enjoy a vast expanse of growing wheat. Designated a National Historic Landmark, the property can be toured.

LINCOLN'S HOME

EIGHTH AND JACKSON STREET, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS

Abraham Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky is a National Historic Site. An early 19th century lone-room log cabin symbolizes the one in which Lincoln was born. The first and only home owned by the 16th President of the United States is a National Historic Site. The two-story Springfield house contains twelve rooms. When Abraham was elected President, he and his family set out for Washington, never to return to their home. President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. His wife, Mary, returned to Springfield, but refused to live in the house. Their only surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln donated the family home to the State of Illinois on the condition that no fee would be charged to visitors.

JOHNSON'S HOMESTEAD

OFF MAIN STREET, GREENVILLE, TENNESSEE

Although Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States spent most of his life in Tennessee, he was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. A replica of his log cabin birthplace was constructed in Greenville in 1999. The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site also preserves his two homes, tailor shop, and grave site. The house depicted was the home of Johnson and his family from 1851 until his death in 1875. The two-story brick structure contains 10 rooms. It was seriously damaged during the Civil War and required extensive repairs and refurbishments by Johnson after his presidency.

GIFT TO A HERO

500 BOUTHILLIER STREET, GALENA, ILLINOIS

U.S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States was born in a log cabin near Cincinnati, Ohio. Ulysses S. and Julia Grant had several residences throughout their marriage. As a soldier, an unsuccessful farmer and businessman, Grant at various times lived in Missouri, Michigan, California Ohio, and Illinois. In 1860, he moved his family to Galena, Illinois, where his father and brother had a tannery and leather store. He and Julia rented a modest brick home for about $100 a year. When Grant returned to Galena from the Civil War, the citizens gifted their hero with a handsome furnished Italianate style two-story brick house, which he and his family lived in continuously 1865 until his election as President in 1868. The National Historic Site is now owned by the State of Illinois and is open to the public.

SPIEGEL GROVE

CORNER OF HAYES AND BUCKLAND AVENUES, FREMONT, OHIO

Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States, and his wife Lucy lived at Spiegel Grove from 1873 until his death in 1893. Four generations of the Hayes family lived in the 31-room house until it was opened to the public in 1966. The natural footpath on the grounds and around the Sandusky River rapids was part of an Indian trail from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River. The estate was so named for the large puddles of rainwater that collected beneath the towering trees after a storm. "Spiegel" is German for "mirror."

LAWNFIELD

8095 MENTOR AVENUE, MENTOR, OHIO

James A. Garfield, the last president to be born in a log cabin, purchased this home near the shores of Lake Erie. To accommodate his large family he added 11 rooms to the existing nine. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States conducted his campaign from the porch of his home. Visitors by the thousands took the train to his home to hear Garfield speak. Reporters, who set up camp on the lawn in front of the house to report what he had to say, dubbed the home, Lawnfield, a name that stuck. After his assassination and death, his widow Lucretia added a library and vault for his books and papers. The house was occupied by Garfield descendants until 1936, when the property was acquired by the Western Reserve Historical Society. It has been designated a National Historic Site.

ARTHUR'S NEW YORK RESIDENCE

123 LEXINGTON AVENUE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

A tenement building, which is occupied by a grocery on the first two floors and apartments on the upper three, was the home of Chester A. Arthur, 21st President of the United States, lived in what then was a luxurious Renaissance style building for most of his adult life. As the building is privately owned, it is not open to the public. However, a plaque inside the building commemorates its historical significance. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. Chester A. Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont. The President Arthur State Historic Site is a 1953 recreation of the second house in which he lived. 

 WESTLAND

 

15 HODGE ROAD, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Grover Cleveland was the only President of the United States to serve two nonconsecutive terms, being the 22nd and the 24th President. He was also the only President to be married in the White House. So he and his 28 years younger bride, the beautiful and popular Frances might have some privacy, Grover purchased a 27 acre working form in Georgetown Heights, which was dubbed "Red Top" because of the color of its roof. Between terms, they lived in New York City. During his second term, he purchased another getaway home, called "Woodley." After his presidency, the Cleveland family purchased a retirement home in Princeton, New Jersey, which he named "Westland" in honor of a close friend and professor at Princeton University, Andrew F. West. The elegant Georgian-style mansion is a 2 and a half story, stone structure covered with stucco painted yellow. Cleveland added a two-story flat-roofed wing. Westland is privately owned and not open to the public.

                

HARRISON'S INDIANA HOME

1230 NORTH DELAWARE STREET, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 

The home of the 23rd President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, is located just blocks from downtown Indianapolis. Built by Harrison in 1874, the 16-room three-story Italianate-style red brick building has been turned into a museum dedicated to the Centennial President. Visitors to the  residence may view ten of its rooms decorated in period furnishings and Harrison belongings. With the exception of the time Harrison spent as a U.S. Senator and President, it was his home until he died in its master bedroom in 1901.

THE SAXON - MCKINLEY HOUSE

331 MARKET STREET SOUTH, CANTON, OHIO

William and Ida McKinley resided at 8th Street and North Market Avenue in Canton, Ohio. It is there that the twenty-fifth President of the United States conducted his famous front porch campaign. The house was torn down, to be replaced first by a hospital and later the Canton Public Library. The house depicted belonged to Ida Saxon McKinley's family. It is the only surviving structure of the McKinleys left in their home town. It is a three-story brick building of irregular massing. It was constructed in two sections, in 1864 and ca. 1865. The McKinleys lived her between 1878 and 1891. At present the building is the home of the National First Ladies Library. The McKinleys later owned a home at 723 Market Avenue North, which no longer exists. It was to to this house they planned to return to after McKinley's second term, but he was assassinated and never lived in it.

SAGAMORE HILL

END OF COVE NECK ROAD, LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK

Theodore Roosevelt was born and lived in New York City, but spent his summers as a youth in the Oyster Bay area. At age 22, he purchased 155 acres of land on Cove Neck, a small peninsula  some 2 miles from Oyster Bay. He had a Queen Anne/Shingle style house at the top of a large hill, which he named Sagamore Hill in honor of Sagamore Mohannis, the Indian chief who used the hill as a meeting place and where he signed over the land to white settlers in the 1660s. The home served as TR's summer White House when he was the 26th President of the United States. He and his family resided in the home from 1886 until his death in 1919. In 1905, Roosevelt added a trophy room to his twenty-two home. It is now the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site and includes the Theodore Roosevelt Museum, located in the former home of Ted Roosevelt, TR's son, which is a short distance from the main house.

TAFT HOUSE

2038 AUBURN AVENUE, CINCINNATI, OHIO

William Howard Taft is the only one to head two of the three branches of the United States Federal Government. He was the 27th President of the United States and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was born and lived the first 25 years of his life in the house and 22 acres purchased by his father Alfonso  in 1849. Located in the Mount Auburn section of Cincinnati, a once popular area to which upper-class Cincinnatians flocked to escape the heat of downtown summers., it is now the  William Howard Taft National Historic Site. The two-story brick house is of Greek Revival design - square, symmetrical, with decorative trim and a small porch. After William married Nellie Herron, they purchased a three-story brick house at 1763 McMillan Street in Cincinnati, which they named "The Quarry."

WILSON'S LAST HOME

2340 S. ST., NW, WASHINGTON, D.C.

As the son of a Presbyterian minister, Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States grew up in church parsonages throughout the South. His birthplace was the manse of the First Presbyterian Church in Staunton, Virginia - an 1846 Greek Revival townhouse with a brick exterior and two-story pillared portico. While a professor and President of Princeton University in New Jersey, lived at a time in two stately houses, right next to each other. His primary home was at 82 Library Place. After his presidency, he and his second wife settled into the house pictured on Embassy Row. They made several modifications to the building, including stacks for his libary and an elevator. He lived there from 1921 until his death in 1924.

HARDING RESIDENCE

380 MOUNT VERNON AVENUE, MARION, OHIO

 Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, conducted his "front porch" campaign from his Victorian home. During the summer of 1920, more than 600,000 people visited the residence to see Harding campaign for President. A brass band met each group of visitors and escorted them to Harding's home. The restored house was built in 1891 and contains almost all original furnishings owned by President and Mrs. Harding. The former First Lady bequeathed the house to the Harding Memorial Association. The Ohio Historical Society operates the home as a historic museum.

COOLIDGE'S VERMONT HOMESTEAD

PLYMOUTH NOTCH, VERMONT

It was while vacationing at his boyhood home shown above, Calvin Coolidge received word of the death of President Warren Harding. His father John Coolidge, a notary public, swore Calvin in as the 30th President of the United States. Although Coolidge and his wife moved to a home in Northampton, Massachusetts, from which he launched his political career, serving as both lieutenant governor and governor of the bay state, his heart was always in the idyllic village of Plymouth Notch, where both his birthplace and boyhood home stand and are visited by countless tourists each year.  The rural Vermont village remains virtually unchanged from when Coolidge lived there. In 1970, the entire community and the surrounding hilltops were included in the National Register of Historic Places. The President is buried along with seven generations of Coolidges in the steep hillside cemetery, only a short walk from the village green.

HOOVER HOUSE ON SAN JUAN HILL

623 MIRADA DRIVE, PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 

Herbert and Lou Hoover lived all over the world during his days as a mining engineer and humanitarian.  Both of the Hoovers were graduates of the newly founded Stanford University. Lou designed their Stanford home with Arthur B. Clark acting as their architect. Built from 1919 to 1920, it was the couple's first and only permanent home. Overlooking the Stanford campus, the irregularly-shaped Hopi-styled home was built on a reinforced concrete slab foundation, with two stories in front and three in the rear, which disappeared in the slope of San Juan Hill. It resembles blocks "piled up." After Lou's death, Herbert deeded the home to Stanford University, where it serves as housing for University professors. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark, but is not open to the public.

  

SPRINGWOOD

4097 ALBANY POST ROAD, HYDE PARK, NEW YORK

Fifteen years before the birth of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, his father James bought Springwood, a large Federal Style farmhouse built around 1800 and transformed it into a much more grand mansion. FDR was born in the master bedroom on the second floor. The estate served both as Roosevelt's retreat and his Summer White House. When he married Eleanor Roosevelt, they moved into Springwood with his mother Sara. In 1915, Franklin and his mother added a tower on the right and large fieldstone wings, replaced the clapboard exterior with stucco, and replaced much of the porch with a large fieldstone terrace with a balustrade and a small columned portico.  At his request FDR was buried near the sundial in the Rose Garden. He designed a cottage called Top Cottage on his estate in 1937 that was one of the first houses in the country to be wheelchair accessible. It is part of the  Home of FDR National Historic Site.  

WALLACE - TRUMAN HOUSE

219 N. DELAWARE, INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

When Harry S. Truman married Bess Wallace, they moved into the Queen Anne style house owned by her widowed mother in 1919. It would be Truman's home until his death in 1972. When he was the 33rd President of the United States, the residence was known as the "Summer White House." It was built about 1867 by George Porterfield Gates, Bess' grandfather. It wasn't until after his presidency in 1953 that Harry purchased the house from the estate of his mother-in-law. The Harry S. Truman National Historic Site preserves both the Independence house and the Truman family farm in Grandview, Missouri, about 15 miles away.

THE EISENHOWER FARM

GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 

As befits a career military officer Ike and Mamie Eisenhower moved 28 times during their married life. Once he became President of Columbia University, he purchased a run down farm in near Gettysburg. It was the first home the 34th President ever owned. With the help of several millionaire oilmen, the Eisenhowers were able to build their dream home and in a few years, the property they bought for $24,000 was worth over a $1 million. Ike's six-room boyhood home with two to three acres on South East Fourth Street in Abilene, Kansas was given to the Federal government by the Eisenhower Foundation in 1966. The home has been open to the public since 1947.

 HOME AT THE KENNEDY COMPOUND

HYANNIS PORT, MASSACHUSETTS

The John F. Kennedy Historic Site preserves the modest 3-story frame birthplace at 83 Beals Street Massachusetts and his larger boyhood home at the corner of Abbottsford and Naples Road, both in Brookline, Massachusetts. When Jack married Jacqueline Bouvier they settled in McLean, Virginia, They lived in Georgetown during his congressional years. Their summer home was an eleven-room and five bathroom house at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. The couple purchased a home in Atoka, Virginia, which Jackie called "Wexford," named for the Irish county from which Jack's family had emigrated. Meant to be their retirement home, Jackie sold it after Jack's assassination.

LBJ RANCH

RANCH ROAD 1 AND HIGHWAY 290, STONEWALL, TEXAS

Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park is about 50 miles west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country. The park preserves LBJ's birthplace, home, ranch and grave of the 36th President of the United States. During his presidency, the LBJ Ranch house was known as the Texas White House. The park is separated into two parts, the boyhood home of President Johnson in Johnson City and his ranch, which is about 14 miles west of Johnson City along the north side of the Pedernales River. Johnson spent approximately one quarter of his Presidency, 490 days, in residence on his ranch. In 1972, the Johnsons donated the Texas White House to the National Park Service.

 LA CASA PACIFICA

DEL PRESIDENTE AVENUE, SAN CLEMENTE, CALIFORNIA

Richard Nixon's farmhouse birthplace in Yorba Linda, California is now part of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace. As President, Nixon relaxed at two Presidential retreats,  one in Key Biscayne, Florida and the other in San Clemente, California. "La Casa Pacifica," or "The House of the Pacific" is a large Spanish style stucco ranch mansion with 12 rooms on 3 and a half acres with magnificent views of the ocean. Nicknamed the "Western White House," Nixon returned to it after his resignation. He sold the property in 1980 and moved to New York City and later Park Ridge, New Jersey. The mansion is privately owned and not open to the public.

FORD'S COLORADO HOME

65 ELK TRACK COURT, BEAVER CREEK, COLORADO

Gerald R. Ford's boyhood home is at 848 Union SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan. During his Congressional years and as Vice President, Jerry and Betty Ford live in Alexandria, Virginia, first at an apartment at 1521 Mount Eagle Place and then in a home they bought at 514 Crown View Drive. After his presidency, the Fords moved into a home At Rancho Mirage, California, where they resided for 30 years. They also owned the 7 bedroom, 9 baths vacation home situated in the heart of one of the world's greatest ski resorts. The 9,854 square foot house is currently for sale with a asking price of $12,950,000.

CARTER'S PRESENT HOME

PLAINS, GEORGIA

The Jimmy Carter National Preservation District includes part of the town of Plains and its environs. The site includes President Carter's current residence, boyhood farm, school, and railroad depot. The area surrounding his residence is under the protection of the Secret Service and the home is not open to the public. When Jimmy and Rosalynn married, he was a naval officer. They moved many times as his assignments changed. 

RANCHO DEL CIELO

3333 REFUGIO ROAD, SANTA YNEZ, CALIFORNIA

TOP OF SANTA YNEZ MOUNTAIN RANGE

Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois in an apartment above a bakery, which has been restored and redecorated. It is named to the National Register of  Historic Places. Reagan lived in Tampico until he was nine, when his family moved to Dixon, Illinois, living in various different houses. Ronald stayed in Dixon until he was 21. When he was elected Governor of California, his wife Nancy refused to live in the Executive Mansion in Sacramento, calling it a firetrap. Friend bought them a home in the suburbs. Near the end of his second term, the Reagans purchased Rancho del Cielo, or "Ranch in the Sky," located in Santa Barbara County. When he became President, it was known as the "Western White House." With Reagan's Alzheimer disease, Nancy sold the ranch and the couple lived 

BUSH COMPOUND

  WALKER'S POINT, NEAR KENNEBUNKPORT, MAINE

George Herbert Walker Bush was born  173 Adams Street in Milton, Massachusetts. The Bush family purchased and built the family retreat and summer home in southern Maine, on the Atlantic Ocean in 1901. George H.W. Bush inherited the property after the death of his parents. During his presidency it was called the "Summer White House." As a young man, Bush relocated to Texas, where he maintains a residence in the exclusive Tanglewood area of Houston, Texas, where he and wife Barbara spend most of their time. Built in 2001, it is a modern house with four bedrooms and an elegant exterior.

CLINTONS' NEW YORK HOME

15 OLD HOUSE LANE, CHAPPAQUA, NEW YORK

Bill Clinton was born in his maternal grandparents home at 117 S. Hervey Street in Hope, Arkansas, a two and a half story"foursquare" structure built after WWI. It has been designated a National Historic Site. Clinton never owned a home until he left the presidency. In 1999, Bill and Hillary Clinton bought a $1.7 million home in Chappaqua, a wealthy hamlet in the town of New Castle in suburban Winchester County, New York. The sprawling 11-room Dutch Colonial house is 5,232 square feet on 1.1 acres at the end of a short cul-de-sac. The Clintons also bought a five-bedroom, brick colonial-style home in Washington, D.C. near Embassy Row for $2.85 million, used by Mrs. Clinton as her residence while she was Senator from New York and now as Secretary of State.

W'S TEXAS RANCH

PRAIRIE CHAPEL RANCH, NEAR CRAWFORD, TEXAS

George W. Bush was born in a hospital in New Haven. Connecticut, while his father was a student at Yale University. The Bushs moved to Texas in 1948. W's childhood home, known as the White House, is at 2703 Sentinel in Midland, Texas has been. The family also lived at 1412 W. Ohio Avenue in Midland. George W. and Laura Bush purchased around 1600 acres just outside Crawford, Texas in 1999. The ranch is in an area known as Prairie Chapel. The Bushs family renovated an existing farmhouse and built a new home. The ranch came to be known as the "Texas White House" while Bush was President. The Bushs bought a home in the affluent Preston Hollow area of Dallas, Texas for a retirement home.

OBAMA'S KENWOOD HOME

5046 GREENWOOD AVENUE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia, California, New York and Masschusetts before settling in Chicago. He and his wife Michelle lived in a condominium in the Hyde Park section of Chicago. In 2005 they purchased a hundred-year-old Georgian Revival mansion in the nearby Kenwood neighborhood. The Obama house has six bedrooms, four fireplaces and a four-car garage. 

 

Presidential Anecdotes

George Washington:

When General Howe took command of the British troops in North America, he sought to open a correspondence with General Washington, but did not wish to acknowledge his official role as Commander-in-Chief of the "rebels." To that purpose he sent a letter to Washington in New York, addressed simply to "George Washington, Esquire." This would be an appropriate salutation for a Virginia planter, but Washington refused to accept the letter, unwilling to be treated less than an equal to his counterpart with the British army. Howe sent a second letter addressed to "George Washington &c; &c; &c." Washington once again refused to accept the letter and was backed by Congress which ordered that none of their officers should receive letters or messages from the British army unless they were addressed to them according to their respective ranks.

Sometime later a soldier brought General Washington a dog whose collar identified him as the property of General Howe. Writing from his headquarters at Perkiomen, Pennsylvania, two days after the Battle of Germantown, Washington returned the dog by special messenger with a note that read:

“General Washington’s compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the collar appears to belong to General Howe.”

John Adams:

Paul F. Boller, Jr. in Presidential Anecdotes relates the story of a dinner party in Paris, where he was seated next to an elegant lady. In the course of the evening, perhaps with the intention of having fun with the American, she said to him:

“Mr. Adams, by your name I conclude you are descended from the first man and woman, and probably in your family may be preserved the tradition which may resolve a difficulty which I could never explain. I never could understand how the first couple found out the art of lying together.”

Not use to such questions in Boston, Adams blushed and speaking through a translator [he never learned French], informed his inquisitive companion:

“There is a physical quality in us resembling the power of electricity or of the magnet, by which when a pair approached within a striking distance they flew together like the needle to the pole or like objects in electric experiments.”

The French lady’s response to an explanation that would do Benjamin Franklin proud was:

“Well, I know not how it was, but this I know: it is a very happy shock.”

Thomas Jefferson:

Jefferson was the first President to shake hands instead of bowing to people. He believed that the president’s dress and manners should reflect the republican simplicity and informality of the country. Pomp and show reminded him too much of European courts. He went so far in avoiding ostentation that he not merely dressed casually, but sloppily. Jefferson refused to observe rules of protocol in seating his dinner guests. As was his preference, as president, his honorary “First Lady,” Dolley Madison and his daughters’ relaxed protocol and turned formal state dinners into more casual and entertaining social events. The rule was “first come, first serve” in finding seats around the president’s table. Foreign diplomats were insulted by being received by Jefferson in worn clothes and slippers and that their wives had to scramble for seats at formal dinners in the presidential mansion.

James Madison:

On January 23, 1783, Madison chaired a committee that submitted a list of approximately 307 works, comprising 1400 or more volumes to the Confederation Congress. The books, compiled by Madison, assisted by Jefferson, were described as “proper for the use of Congress.” Madison believed that it was indispensable that congress should have a library of books available at all times at its command authorities on public law whose expertise:

“would render… their proceedings conformable to propriety; and it was observed that the want of this information was manifest in several important acts of Congress.”

The works included many of the new and often radical Enlightment writers, such as Voltaire, Gibbon, Hume, Adams Smith and Priestly, as well as authorities such as Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Bacon, Montesquieu, Grotius, Coke and Blackstone. Madison must have relished the thought of having debates in Congress guided by these thinkers he so admired. Madison's proposal was defeated because of "the inconsistency of advancing even a few hundred pounds at this crisis."

James Monroe:

In a section of Hampton, Virginia, there is an old army base still in use. Fort Monroe, named for the fifth president of the Unites States, was founded by Captain John Smith, which he named Old Point Comfort. At this vantage the colonists could see who was entering the James River, giving them warning if any Spanish troops were approaching. The fort underwent several name changes, before receiving its current designation. What is remarkable about the fort is that it seems to be haunted by historical ghosts. One would think that perhaps Monroe would show up, but he has never been sighted.

Among the famous haunting spirits seen were Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Chief Black Hawk and Edgar Allen Poe, who, as a young soldier, was stationed at Ft. Monroe. Among the less famous is a woman in white, a child, and a spirit who hates roses. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was imprisoned at Fort Monroe for two years after the Civil War and was mistreated severely with his wounds left untreated. The interior of Fort Monroe contains a “moat,” which is said to be the home to a water monster like the one found in Loch Ness in Scotland. There have been several sightings, but no one has been able to determine what it is - perhaps nothing more than the invention of active imaginations.

John Quincy Adams:

John Quincy Adams may have secretly desired a literary career. Even in his busy diplomatic and political life, he found time to write poetry and composing numerous hymn texts. After his death, a collection of his poems was published as Poems of Religion and Society. One hymnal used in the 1840s contained 22 of Adams’ compositions, though none are found in recent ones. Probably his most well-known poem is “The Wants of Man,” Published in The Quincy Patriot, September 25, 1841, which includes the stanzas:

“I want the genius to conceive, the talents to unfold

Designs the vicious to retrieve, the virtuous to uphold.

Inventive power, combining skill; a preserving soul,

Of human hearts to mold the will, and reach from Pole to Pole.

. . .

These are the Wants of mortal Man, -

I cannot want them long,

For life itself is but a span,

And earthly bliss – a song.

My last great Want – absorbing all –

Is, when beneath the sod,

And summoned to my final call,

The Mercy of my God.”

Andrew Jackson:

In answer to our shooting, fire lit his eye of gray; / Erect, but thin and pallid, he passed upon his bay…. / But spite of fever and fasting, and hours of sleepless care, / The soul of Andrew Jackson shone forth in glory there. – Thomas Dunn English, “The Battle of New Orleans.”

Andrew Jackson was eight feet tall / His arm was a hickory limb and a maul. / His sword is so long he dragged it on the ground. / Every friend was an equal. Every foe was a hound. – Vachel Lindsay, “The Statue of Old Andrew Jackson.”

Fierce as a fighter, and yet above trickery, / Virile and valiant and Leal to the core. – Clinton Scollard, Old Hickory.

Martin Van Buren:

The Devil in the Belfry” is a short satirical comedy first published by Edgar Allan Poe in 1839. In the story, the little town of Vondervotteimittis is said to never have changed as long as anyone can remember. All the homes look the same, both inside and out, and everyone dresses exactly the same, with the exception that the more respect a person has in the town the longer are his coat-tails and the bigger his pipe and shoe buckles. The only think the inhabitants care about are cabbages and clocks. Everyone has a watch and all watches are synchronized. There is one very large town clock with seven faces that can be seen from every part of the town. At noon each day, the citizens pause long enough to count the 12 strokes of the clock. This perfectly set little town is thrown into an uproar when a devilish stranger arrives playing a large fiddle and goes directly into the belltower and kills the belfry-man. With the story, Poe is making fun of Martin Van Buren and his election methods. It can be seen as a satire of New York City, originally settled by the Dutch as New Amsterdam. The Devil represents the new immigrants – the Irish, as he plays a tune called “Judy O’Flannagan and Paddy O’Rafferty,” which were stock names for Irish newcomers.

William Henry Harrison:

Harrison saw the evil effects of liquor while in the army. He was a man of strict temperate habits and set an example of total abstinence before his comrades and soldiers. Harrison always drank moderately, and less and less as the years passed. Every farm had a distillery to make whiskey in those days, but he closed his and altered it to parch corn. At his home he served only sweet cider, not the hard cider that would be claimed as his drink during his 1840 presidential campaign.

John Tyler:

On his sixtieth birthday Julia Tyler wrote a poem to her husband, saying,

“What e’er changes time may bring, I’ll love thee as thou art!”

On January 1, 1855, sixty-five year-old Tyler composed a love poem for her

“The seamen on the wave, love,

When storm and tempest rave, love,

Look to one star to save love,

Thou art that star to me!”

Tyler was often inspired to write poetry when faced with a difficult or transitional moment in his life. He wrote the ballad “Sweet Lady, Awake! A Serenade” in 1843 when he was courting his wife-to-be, Julie Gardiner, who later set it to music. Among its lines are:

“Sweet lady awake, from your slumbers awake

Weird beings we come o’er hill and through brake

To sing you a song in the stillness of night

Oh, read you our riddle fair lady aright?

We are sent by the one whose found heart is your own,

Who mourns in they absence and sighs all alone.

Alas, he is distant – but tho’ far, far away,

He thinks of you, Lady, by night and by day.

Sweet lady awake, sweet lady awake!"

When his three-month old daughter Anne died in July 1825, Tyler composed an elegy,

"Oh, child of my love as a beautiful flower;

Thy blossom expanded a short fleeing hour.

The winter of death hath blighted thy bloom

And thou lyest alone in the cold dead tomb….”

James Knox Polk:

The musical group “They Might Be Giants,” commonly abbreviated as TMBG, was formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell and grew in numbers to include Marty Beller, Dan Miller and Danny Weinkauf. The American alternative rock band is best known for an unconventional and experimental style of music. TMBG took their name from a 1971 movie, starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward, “They Might Be Giants,” which in turn was from Miguel Cervantes Don Quixote, who jousted with windmills because “they might be giants.” Among the singing group’s most popular songs was “James K. Polk,” a three-minute long summary of the achievements of the Eleventh President of the United States. Its lyrics include:

“From Nashville came a dark horse riding up

He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump

Austere, severe, he held few people dear

His oratory filled his foes with fear

The factions soon agreed

He’s just the man we need

To bring about victory

Fulfill our manifest destiny

And annex the land the Mexicans command

And when the votes were cast the winner was

Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump”

Zachary Taylor:

Some historians theorized that Taylor’s death had been the result of arsenic poisoning. In 1991, his descendants agreed to have his body exhumed from its grave. Kentucky’s medical examiner took samples of the president’s hair and fingernail tissue to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for examination. Using neutron activation analysis to measure the amount of arsenic in the hair and nail samples, Larry Robinson and Frank Dyer’s team in the Chemical and Analytical Sciences Division placed the sample in a beam of neutrons from the High Flux Isotope Reactor. They studied the gamma rays coming from the samples for distinctive energy levels associated with the presence of arsenic. It is among the easiest elements to identify through neutron activation and can be detected in a few parts per million. Most human bodies contain traces of arsenic. The essential question to answer was if the samples from Taylor’s body had more arsenic than would be expected after lying in his crypt for 141 years.

Robinson and Dyer’s results were sent to the Kentucky medical examiner for a decision. The examiner announced that the arsenic levels in the samples were several hundred times less that there would have been had the president been poisoned. This should have put the matter to rest, but conspiracy buffs can always find holes in results that do not support their theories. In a controversial 1999 book, History as Mystery, Michael Parenti, devoted a chapter to “The Strange Death of Zachary Taylor,” speculating that Taylor had been assassinated and the autopsy in 1991 had been botched.

Millard Fillmore:

On December 28, 1917 H.L. Mencken, columnist for the New York Evening Mail, started the myth that Fillmore installed the White House’s first bathtub. In the article, titled “A Neglected Anniversary,” Mencken discussed the history of the bathtub, describing the first bathtub, how each bathtub had faced substantial public, medical and legal opposition, and how one was eventually installed in the White House during the administration of President Millard Fillmore. Despite confessing that he had made the whole thing up to provide some harmless fun during World War I, the story of the White House bathtub developed a life of itself. Every since this has been repeated so often; it has been accepted as a fact in many sources. Moravia, New York annually hosts a celebration called Fillmore Days in July. One event involves four-wheel bathtub racing down Main Street, in honor of the hoax about Fillmore’s White House bathtub.

Franklin Pierce:

One day while at Bowdoin College, Pierce was faced with solving an abstruse algebra problem. Not having the patience to take the time to figure out the solution on his own, he glanced at the slate of a classmate who was working on the same problem. Pierce noted that his friend had succeeded in solving the problem. Pierce wrote out the same solution upon his slate. The mathematics tutor did not have much faith in Pierce’s mathematical ability and when he saw Pierce’s solution to the problem, he asked him where he got the solution. Pierce was not one to lie, so he readily admitted that he had copied it from a classmate.

We pick up Pierce’s work with mathematics a bit later when he was a teacher in a district school in Maine. Once again he came across a problem he couldn’t solve even though he spent many hours in his room making an attempt. The next day, at school, he delivered a long lecture to his pupils upon the propriety of solving their own problems and that it would do them no good if he showed them the solution. That night back in his room, he made a further attempt to solve the problem and was just about ready to give up in despair when he noticed a little recess in the chimney. He turned the latch and opened the door where he saw a piece of paper. Upon examining the paper, he was amazed to discover that it was the written solution of the very problem with which he had been laboring. The next day he relented and showed his students how to do the problem.

James Buchanan:

On March 5, 1860, John Covode, a Republican member of Congress from Pennsylvania, introduced a resolution calling for the appointment of a committee to investigate:

“whether the president of the United States, or any other officer of the government, has by money, patronage, or other improper means, sought to influence the action of Congress,… for or against the passage of any law appertaining to the rights of any state or territory; also, to inquire into and investigate whether any officer or officers of the government have, by combination or otherwise, prevented or defeated, or attempted to prevent or defeat, the execution of any law or laws now upon the statue book, and whether the President has failed or refused to compel the execution of any law thereof; and at the Philadelphia and any other navy yards, and into any abuses in connection with the public buildings and other public works of the United States.”

The resolution was adopted by a vote of 117 to 45 and the speaker of the House appointed Covode, Abram B. Olin of New York, Charles R. Train of Massachusetts, Warren Winslow of North Carolina and James C. Robinson of Illinois to the committee investigating the possible impeachment of Buchanan. While it was partisan attempt to embarrass the President, already greatly beleaguered by conditions in the country, the committee was able to root out large amounts of corruption, treason and incompetence. Buchanan sent formal messages to Congress complaining about the activities of the Covode Committee and denying that it had the power to make such an investigation. The Committee’s majority report was released in June 1860 and Republicans blanketed the country with 100,000 copies of it.

Although the committee did not introduce articles of impeachment or censure, the report painted a shocking picture of an extremely corrupt administration. Among the findings, government printing contracts had been awarded to secure support from newspaper editors, while patronage and monetary bribes had been wielded in the attempt to gain passage of the Lecompton Constitution. Winslow, the only Democrat on the investigating committee filed a minority report in which he stated that in his opinion the “whole intent of the resolution was to manufacture an electioneering document.” Later in June the House of Representatives voted to censure President Buchanan and Navy Secretary Isaac Toucey for their part in the misdeeds. The resolution stated:

“Resolved, That the President and the Secretary of the Navy, by receiving and considering the party relations of bidders for contracts and the effect of awarding contracts upon pending elections, have set an example dangerous to the public safety, and deserving the reproof of the House.”

Abraham Lincoln:

In 1842,Lincoln confessed that he had written letters to the Springfield, Illinois newspaper in which he satirized James Shields, then the state auditor. Shields, who was a crack shot, challenged Lincoln to a duel. As the challenged person, Lincoln was the one to choose the weapon to be used. Lincoln chose cow pies, but when Shields persisted, Lincoln eventually chose cavalry broadswords. When the two met at the appointed place for the duel, Lincoln chose one of the swords and because of his remarkable long arms and his height, he slashed at tree branches that the much shorter Shields could not reach. Calmer heads prevailed, accommodations were made, and the duel did not proceed. Shields later became a Brigadier General and a U.S. Senator from Illinois, Missouri and Minnesota.

Andrew Johnson:

While addressing a crowd of African Americans in Nashville during the 1864 campaign, Johnson referred to himself as “the Moses” of the black people. On another occasion in a speech in Washington he offered to “be your Moses and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage to a fairer future of liberty and peace.”

Ulysses S. Grant:

Grant was tone death and could not recognize any of the songs that were popular at the time. He especially detested military music. He once told a reporter:

“I only know two songs. One of them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn’t.”

Rutherford B. Hayes:

“Jim Crow” was a minstrel character popular in the early 1820s. The name originally was used by Americans as a derogatory term for a black person. Later “Jim Crow” referred to the systematic practice of segregating African-Americans, which was common in the South until the 1960s. “Jim Crow” laws were designed to deny civil rights to blacks or to enforce the policy of segregation. Jim Crow effectively began after the election of Rutherford B. Hayes. The Black Codes of the Reconstruction foreshadowed the birth of the system of Jim Crow, but the Compromise of 1877 is considered to be the act that brought Jim Crow into full power. During the 1880s, civil rights and political access for African-Americans were rapidly rescinded. Northern and Southern politicians alike, came to the conclusion that while solidarity was of greater importance that black civil rights.

James A. Garfield:

John Rock, an educator, physician, and attorney, was the first African-American admitted to practice before the Supreme Court. On one occasion he was arrested in the Washington D.C. train station for not having a colored travel pass. Learning of this, Garfield was so shocked by the racial incident that he personally had the entire system of passes scrapped by Congress. Rock was a tireless fighter for racial equality and found a staunch ally in Garfield.

Chester A. Arthur:

President Arthur won a reputation for reticence, especially in his dealings with the press, which he did not quite trust. On one occasion, he joked in a speech at the Union Club in New York City:

“If it were not for the reporters, I would tell you the truth, because I know you are intimate friends and devoted adherents to the Republican Party.”

The New York Sun correspondent wrote on April 9, 1893:

“The President maintains a reticence [on politics] which makes all former silent men appear garrulous and leaky.”

The Washington correspondent for the New York Tribune commented on the characteristic on April 16, 1882:

“There are two kinds of reticent men – the reticent man who is silent and the reticent man who talks. President Arthur is one of the latter kind. He had a habit of talking very rapidly and with apparent freedom, but he often left the person to whom he was talking as utterly in the dark about his views as if he had not opened his mouth.”

Grover Cleveland:

When Grover Cleveland first entered the White House he was a bachelor and he asked his youngest sister, Rose, also known as “Libbie” to serve as his official hostess, which she did for the first fourteen months of his first term until he married Frances Folsom. Rose Cleveland was considered a “bluestocking,” a serious, academic woman with little patience for women who focused their attention only on clothes and entertaining. In her private letters, she expressed the frustration she experienced as a result of the unwritten code of behavior and propriety, expected of Victorian ladies.

Most of Libbie’s friends were theatrical or literary professionals and on occasion she was able to coax her hard-working brother out of the White House to see a Gilbert and Sullivan production. Rose taught literature in Lafayette, Indiana, and later at Hamilton College. Her first book George Eliot’s Poetry and Other Studies was published while she still was at the White House. It went through 12 editions and earned her some $25,000. She published You and I: Or Moral, Intellectual and Social Culture, a 545 page book on the changes in 1886 American life. Her last treatise, The Soliloquies of St. Augustine, Translated into English, With Notes and Introduction by the Translator was published in 1911.

In 1889, 44-year-old Rose Cleveland began a romantic friendship with Evangeline Simpson, a wealthy 30-year-old widow, whom she met while they both were in Florida. After the two returned to their homes, they began to exchange increasingly erotic letters. After a few years, Simpson surprisingly married an Episcopal bishop twice her age. The latter died in 1901, and after observing the traditional year of mourning, Evangeline and Rose left for Europe and lived together in Italy, settling their permanently in 1910. Evangeline lived for 12 years after the death of Rose. The two are buried side-by-side in Italy.

Benjamin Harrison:

During the Civil War, Lambdin Milligan, a civilian member of a pro-Confederate society was convicted of inciting to rebellion by a military court and was sentenced to hang. At the end of the hostilities, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Milligan that the military court had no jurisdiction to try civilians when civil courts existed. In 1871 Milligan filed a suit against the military commission asking for $100,000 in damages. Harrison was appointed special assistant U.S. attorney by the administration of President Grant to defend the commission. Harrison argued that the military court had acted in good faith, but the jury found the law was on Milligan’s side and reluctantly declared in his favor. However, it awarded Milligan only $5.

William McKinley:

The name “yellow journalism” came from a popular New York World comic strip called “Hogan’s Alley,” which featured a yellow-dressed character called “the yellow kid.” Not to be outdone by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst induced artist R.F. Outcault away from the World to bring his strip to the New York Journal. Pulitzer hired another cartoonist to create another “yellow kid.” From this origin, the sensationalist press of the 1890s became a competition between the “yellow kids” and led to the journalistic style of the two rival papers to be known as “yellow journalism.”

The papers relied on lurid features, sensationalist headlines, and irresponsible, inaccurate and biased approaches to news gathering to sell newspapers. Hearst realized that a war in Cuba not only would sell newspapers, but also move him into a position of national prominence. He went about manufacturing the war he sought by sending his star reporters to Cuba, from where they sent heart-tugging stories back to the boss, describing in horrific details, rapes of female prisoners, summary executions, valiant fighting by the rebels and the starvation of women and children. After the sinking of the Maine, Hearst turned up the journalistic heat and without any evidence blamed the Spanish for the assault on a U.S. ship.

Theodore Roosevelt:

On September 22, 2003, a reception was held at the Theodore Roosevelt Gallery in the Pusey Library of Harvard University. The family of the late Sarah Laden Derby Gannet, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Ethel donated TR’s famous “Pigskin Library.” It was the collection of books that Roosevelt took with him, or had sent to him, on his African safari, 1909 – 1910, for his personal reading. The name came from the fact that most of the books were bound or rebound in pigskin. The collection consisted of about 60 books, including novels by Mark Twain, Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens; collected poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Browning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Perch Bysshe Shelley; Dante’s Inferno and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; the Federalist Papers, the Bible; Alice in Wonderland, short stories by Bret Harte; and the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton and Thomas Macaulay; as well as many others.

William Howard Taft:

Taft had a fine appreciation for pretty girls. At a fair in 1910, he loitered at the “beauty booth… where were smilingly at him some of the most beautiful women on the stage.” A news report noted,

“There was no mistaking the fact that the president had made a sensation among the actresses and chorus girls.”

During a voyage down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, the President complimented the ladies of the Crescent City. He observed that if the delegates to the River Convention remained in the city two or three days, they would forget that there was such a thing as a river. Taft was delighted and flattered when pretty opera star Madame Tetrazzine curtsied and sang to the Presidential box throughout a performance. Alice Longworth Roosevelt, who was in attendance, jokingly accused Taft of having a flirtation with the singer. Taft’s comment about the diva was:

“She does not realize that the only difference between us is that she is on one stage and I on another. I feel that I am acting just as much as she is.”

Woodrow Wilson:

Republican women held so-called “Indignation Meetings” to protest Wilson’s courting of Edith Bolling Galt so soon after the death of his first wife Ellen Wilson. In an increasingly dirty campaign, she became the butt of many bawdy jokes. In particular the following risqué jest had wide circulation.

Question: “What did Mrs. Galt do when the President of the United States proposed to her?” Answer: “She was so shocked she fell out of bed.”

Warren Harding:

It has been alleged that Harding was inducted into the Ku Klux Klan in a secret ceremony held in the Green Room of the White House, an assertion made by a dying Klansman who claimed to have been a member of the “Presidential Induction Team.” However, the evidence of such an induction or Hardings’ membership in the Klan is highly disputable. It might not be so strange at the time for even prominent people to join the Klan. However, his proposing an anti-lynching law, his call for racial equality in Birmingham, Alabama before a segregated audience, his appointment of Jews to high-profile positions and his speeches just before his death in which he condemned the Ku Klux Klan as “factions of hatred and prejudice and violence” that “challenge both civil and religious liberty” do not seem the actions one would expect from a Klansman.

Alfred Cohen, a longtime friend of Harding’s wrote:

“He was devoid of racial or religious prejudices.”

When in the presidential election of 1920, various bigots attempted to hurt his chances of being elected, by spreading accusations that he was “tainted with Negro blood.” If this was so or even believed true, the Klan wouldn’t want him as a member because it was their claim that any Negro blood made a person colored. Unfortunately for Harding’s reputation, a man who was a great public favorite from the time of his election until after his death was believed capable of any “crime” after the corruption of his administration and his scandalous affairs became public knowledge.

Calvin Coolidge:

In Public Years, 1932, Coolidge observed,

“People who’ve had a hanging in the family don’t like to talk about a rope.”

Once a man riding in a car with Coolidge through Vermont, commented,

“See how closely they have shaved these sheep?” “At least on this side,” said the President.

He once commented that a lot of people from Plymouth couldn’t understand how he had gotten to be President – “least of all my father.” When Coolidge arrived at a destination aboard the Presidential yacht, he was greeted by a twenty-one gun salute. He said it “wasted money using all that ammunition, play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ instead.” Once the Cabinet tried to convince him to spend more money on military aviation, but he answered them by saying,

“Can’t we just buy one airplane and have the pilots take turns?”

"You lose." [Replying to a woman who said she had bet she could get him to say three words.]

Herbert Hoover:

During the 1928 campaign, Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to back his party’s Catholic candidate and went so far to endorse Hoover. In some parts of the South, Heflin’s decision to cross “party lines” was considered heresy. The large number of Alabamans who disagreed led to the origin of the popular saying, adopted as the proud slogan of staunch party loyalists in the Democrat Party.

“I’d vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket!”

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Before Roosevelt made his first run for the presidency, he consulted a group of college professors for their advice. This group became known as the “Brain Trust.” They helped fashion the vast, many-faceted New Deal program and some accompanied Roosevelt to Washington. Counselors, such as Raymond Moley, Rexford Guy Tugwell and Adolph A. Berle, Jr. were important advisers in the early years. Some became members of his cabinet, including Henry Wallace, Harold L. Ickes, Frances Perkins, Cordell Hull, and James Farley.

Harry S. Truman:

On April 23, 1945, the Soviet Foreign Secretary V.M. Molotov took offense to the belligerency of President Truman’s remarks, protesting,

“I have never been talked to like that in my life.”

Truman shot back:

“Carry out your agreements and you won’t be talked to like that.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Mrs. Eisenhower was very disappointed that John F. Kennedy was to succeed her husband as President of the United States. Jacqueline Kennedy had given birth to John F. Kennedy, Jr. by caesarian section two weeks after Jack was elected president. Still in frail health, Mamie Eisenhower escorted Jackie around the vast White House, never telling the soon-to-be new First Lady that a wheelchair was available for her use. Seeing Mrs. Eisenhower’s displeasure during the tour, Mrs. Kennedy survived the ordeal of walking throughout the White House, only to collapse when she returned home. Later asked why she did not mention the wheelchair, Mamie, replied,

“Because she never asked.”

John F. Kennedy:

On May 19, 1962, a birthday celebration for President Kennedy was held at Madison Square Garden, with 15,000 people in attendance .At one point in the evening, Marilyn Monroe, sewed into a tight-fitting, flesh-colored dress, covered with 2500 rhinestones, and with nothing under it, managed to make her way to a podium and sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” in a sultry voice. She ended her tribute with a snippet of new lyrics that she had written from the song “Thanks for the Memory.” Afterwards, the President came to the stage and joked,

“I can now retire from politics after having Happy Birthday sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.”

Lyndon Johnson:

Lyndon B. Johnson gave specific instructions that he was to be buried between his mother’s grave and his wife’s grave site, but according to custom his wife was to one day be buried to his right, the reverse of what LBJ had wanted. The military gravediggers were convinced to follow the President’s preference. About five feet down, the backhoe’s digging bucket hit metal. It turned out that a large irrigation pipe ran lengthwise down the center of Johnson’s intended grave. The pipe was cut and removed. Everyone wondered if Johnson was aware of the pipe being at the site of his grave until it was discovered that LBJ had located the pipe line in the first place. It appears that Johnson thought he would play one last joke on his staff by locating the line lengthwise to the grave site and wondering how they would handle the digging when they hit the pipe.

Richard M. Nixon:

Charles Colson, special counsel to the White House, compiled a list of Nixon’s major political enemies, which was sent in a memorandum to John Dean on September 9, 1971. The official purpose of what became known as Nixon’s Enemies List, as described by the White House Counsel’s Office, was to “screw” Nixon’s political enemies by means of tax audits from the IRS, and by manipulating “grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, prosecution, etc.” The original list in Colson’s memo consisted of 20 names, although a master list of Nixon political opponents and another list later were combined to contain more than 30,000 names.

The original 20 were: Arnold M. Picker, Alexander E. Barkan, Ed Guthman, Maxwell Dane, Charles Dyson, Howard Stein, Allard Lowenstein, Morton Halperin, Leonard Woodcock, S. Sterling Munro, Jr., Bernard T. Feld, Sidney Davidoff, John Conyers, Samuel M. Lambert, Stewart Rawlings Mott, Ronald Dellums, Daniel Schorr, S. Harrison Dogole. Paul Newman, and Mary McGrory. Actor Paul Newman said that his inclusion of the first enemies’ list was one of his greatest accomplishments.

Gerald Ford:

Minority leader Jerry Ford led the fight to impeach Associate Justice of the Supreme Court William O. Douglas. Ford had an axe to grind as the Senate had failed to confirm President Nixon’s Supreme Court nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell. Ford disapproved of the lifestyle and liberal positions of Douglas. Because of the divorce settlements of his first three wives, Douglas was in dire need to make extra money. Besides publishing extensively, Douglas became president of the Parvin Foundation, which had been financed by the sale of infamous Flamingo Hotel by casino financier and Foundation founder Albert Parvin. The hearings began in late April 1970 with Ford the main witness. He attacked Douglas’ “liberal opinions,” “his defense of filthy movies, and his ties to Parkin. It soon became clear that the hearings were a farce and they were brought to a close with no public vote taken on the matter. In his statement in the House on September 7, 1968, Ford declared:

“The only honest answer to that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers [it] to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.”

Jimmy Carter:

Once while on a fishing trip in Plains, President Carter encountered a “swamp rabbit,” which making hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, attempted to climb into the boat with the President. Carter shooed the animal away with an oar and a White House photographer captured the “attack” on film. It wasn’t too much later that the President related the tale to Jody Powell, who casually mentioned it to one of the White House correspondents. Almost immediately, the attack of the rabbit on the President became national news, and Carter was repeatedly questioned about the episode.

Ronald Reagan:

On two occasions while Governor of California, Ronald Reagan reported seeing Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). The first occurred as he and Nancy were driving along the coast highway to Los Angeles to attend a party and they stopped to watch the event. In 1974, the governor’s Cessna Citation jet plane was making an approach to land at Bakersfield, California. During the descent, Reagan noticed a strange light behind the plane. According to Reagan,

“We followed it for several moments. It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up in the heavens.”

Bill Paynter, the pilot of the plane and a former Air Force colonel, added,

“It appeared to several hundred yards away… a fairly steady light until it began to accelerate. Them it appeared to elongate. Then the light took off. It went up a 45 degrees angle at a high rate of speed… The UFO went from normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly.”

George H. W. Bush:

On January 9, 1992, during a formal state dinner in Tokyo President Bush became ill and vomited in the lap of Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi, and then fainted. Earlier in the evening, Bush had told his physician that he was feeling unwell. It proved to be nothing more than the flu, but the incident spawned the Japanese slang verb bushusuru (literally, “Bushing it”) to refer to throwing up.

Bill Clinton:

Among those pardoned by Clinton in January 2001 was Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress, who had been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. During her captured Heart was brainwashed and participated in a bank robbery. Some of Clinton’s 140 pardons were the subject of severe and lingering criticism, most of which was directed at the pardoning of Carlos Vignali, convicted of cocaine trafficking, and Marc Rich, a fugitive from charges of tax evasion. He also pardoned his former Whitewater partner, Susan McDougal.

George W. Bush:

Artist Tom Lea lived to 93. Among his many admirers were President George W. and Laura Bush. Some people may be aware of the public murals he painted during the Depression years of the 1930s, or his WWII paintings that appeared in Life Magazine and his reputation as a war correspondent. He also wrote best-selling novels, The Brave Bulls and The Wonderful Country as well as the history of Texas King Ranch. Lea also made many paintings of the Great Southwest. Laura Bush invited Lea and his wife Sarah to dinner at the governor’s mansion, where he entertained the Bush’s other guests by reading from Tom Lea, An Oral History. Laura found a quote in Lea’s autobiography that moved her and which she shared with her husband:

“Sarah and I live on the east side of our mountain. It is the sunrise side, not the sunset side. It is the side to see the day that is coming, not the side to see the day that is gone. The best day is the day coming….”

Bush was so taken with the hopeful outlook of Lea’s sentiment that he often used the quote in his tenure as governor and included it in his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention that nominated him for President of the United States.

Barack Obama:

One of the non-issues that both the Hillary Clinton and the John McCain campaigns raised to question Obama’s fitness for the Presidency was his supposed friendship with William Ayers, a distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois. The catch with him was that he was one of the leaders of the Weathermen Underground, a radical left organization in the 1970s. The group was responsible for a series of bombings, primarily of government buildings. The group chose targets to avoid human injury, but a bomb eventually claimed three lives – members of the Weathermen who died during an accidental explosion. Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn surrendered to authorities in 1980. They were spared Federal prosecution because of government misconduct in investigating them. Dohrn received three years probation and was fined $1,500 on Illinois state charges, and spent seven months in jail for refusing to testify against former Weathermen.

Obama and Ayers first met in 1995 at the Ayers and Dohrn’s home, when they hosted a small gathering at which State Senator Alice J. Palmer introduced Barack Obama as her chosen successor for the 1996 primary. Obama served as president of the board of directors for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a large non-profit organization that Ayers was instrumental in starting. The board distributed grants to schools and raised private matching funds, while Ayers worked with the operating arm of the organization. Obama and Ayers served together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty foundation established in 1941. Obama’s contacts with Ayers was public knowledge in Chicago for years and didn’t seem worthy of mention until the Illinois Senator became a candidate for the presidency.

At the Democratic Party primary debate in Philadelphia on April 16, 2008, moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his relationship with Ayers. The candidate replied:

“This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense, George.”

Despite investigations by likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic and CNN, which concluded that there was no evidence that Obama and Ayers were close or that Ayers was then involved in terrorist activities or were any other Obama associates, the McCain camp couldn’t let go of the supposed connection. Governor Palin said in her speeches that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.” In response to a question about Obama’s patriotism, Senator McCain said:

“I’m sure he’s very patriotic, but his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question.”

The Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign each launched attack ads, calling Obama “too dangerous for America.” On October 16, 2008, the McCain campaign launched a massive anti-Obama computer generator robocalls, including one tying Obama to Ayers and terrorists:

“You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organizations bomber the U.S. Capital, the Pentagon, a judge’s home, and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and His democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country.”