Grace Coolidge Overview

Overview:

Grace Coolidge had already made an impact on the American public as a glamorous spouse of the Vice President. When she became First Lady at the age of 44, she was already intriguing to the public. Since she did not give interviews to the press, her public silence only enhanced her mystery and glamour. Because her husband was often perceived as non-talkative, she was the outgoing one who impressed visitors and dignitaries in a joyous White House. However, two deaths marked this presidency. The death of President Warren Harding, in 1923, brought a sudden presidency to the then Vice President Coolidge and the death of their son, Calvin, Jr., in 1924, cast a pallor over the many successes the two did have in their time as First Couple.

Early Life

Grace Anna Goodhue was born in Burlington, Vermont on January 3, 1879. She was the only child of Andrew Issachar Goodhue and Lemira Barrett. Grace’s parents were from New Hampshire–Lemira from Merrimack and Andrew from Hancock. The Goodhues were the seventh generation descending from William Goodhue, who, in 1636, emigrated from England to Ipswich, Massachusetts. Goodhues served in the first Congress and one became a U.S. Senator in 1797. (source: Grace Coolidge: An Autobiography)

Andrew Goodhue became an electrical engineer after an apprenticeship in Nashua, NH. In 1870,he married Lemira Barrett and they moved to Burlington, Vermont where he had a job waiting at Gates Cotton Mill. They lived at 315 St. Paul Street in mill housing; after nine years, Grace was born. Her parents bought a home on lower Maple Street and, when Grace was two years old, they relocated. As an only child, Grace was part of her parent’s circle. With few playmates, she appreciated visits to her grandparents, Benjamin and Caroline, and with three uncles and two aunts the house in Hancock, NH, was filled with nine grandchildren.

An early memory for Grace was that of an injury to her father at the mill. Despite the fact that she was only four years old, she remembered that a knot in the wood he was cutting at the mill flew out and struck his face so that bones of his nose and jaw were broken and his eye muscles were injured. Since her father needed a quiet recovery, Grace was sent to live with Mrs. John Lyman Yale and her family. Grace grew to love this family. They were the ones who introduced Grace to children with hearing impairment.

Burlington was a small city with excellent schools. Grace credited them with giving her an excellent education and lively social life. She had the opportunity to hear fine music in such a worldly city. Her family must have encouraged this and even hired an elocutionist for Grace’s music lessons. Her musical education included grammar school piano lessons.

Religion was part of Grace’s youth. At sixteen, she decided to become a member of the Congregational Church and change her affiliation from the methodist church where her parents worshipped. This showed a leadership streak in that she made the decision and other family members followed her. Her parents soon joined her in her new church home and her father made many a repair to the organ or furnace as a deacon.

Andrew Goodhue formed a business partnership with William H. Lange and bought a machine shop. Only a year later, 1887, her father was appointed Inspector of Boilers of Steam Vessels for Lake Champlain. In 1898, his shop was sold and he continued as Inspector of Steam Vessels until 1920. Grace also remembered steam heat and electricity being installed in her home in her early years. These modern conveniences were noted by her in her Autobiography since they changed and softened the hardships of daily life.

Grace graduated from high school in 1897 and even though the female population was small at the University of Vermont, she assumed she would attend. She did take a year off before going to college for health reasons (she had curvature of the spine and needed exercise to overcome it) and lived with her aunt, Alice H. Goodhue, widow of Dr. Perley E. Goodhue. Her father built a new home up the hill at 312 Maple Street and she lived there with her family during college. When Grace entered college, she was five feet four inches tall and considered herself to be plump. She had thick curly black hair, grey-green eyes and a generous mouth. She liked her life at college. She enjoyed sleigh rides in winter and theater productions. She did join with thirteen other women to petition Pi Beta Phi, a national fraternity, for a charter at the University of Vermont. The group was successful and they met many times in the attic of her house.

Her friendship with Ivah W. Gale from Newport, Vermont is important. Ivah lived with the Goodhues during college and was a lifelong friend. (She returned to live with Grace in the 1950’s at Grace’s final home, Road Forks on Ward Avenue in Northampton, M.) Grace told her friends, “She is more like a sister than any other friend I have.” ) (Ross, p. 336)
Surprising her mother, Grace did not apply to teach in Burlington, but wrote Caroline Yale, principal of the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, MA, to request a position in the teacher training class. The Yale family had introduced Grace to children with hearing impairment and thus Grace had the courage to contact Caroline, a Yale family member. Mrs. Goodhue agreed that Grace should teach in Northampton since this was a women’s town with Smith College dominating the social life.

The career of teaching deaf children was a challenging one. Very few would seek out the oral method of teaching and look for such a serious occupation. Despite the fact that Grace only taught a few years, she was to make this her lifelong interest.

Marriage and Family

There are two versions of how Calvin Coolidge met Grace Goodhue, but the proximity of the two was helpful. They lived across the street from each other. Grace saw Calvin Coolidge stand in his window to shave with a derby hat on the back of his head to hold down part of his hair. He was wearing long underwear and a hat. He must have looked comical. Either she laughed and he pursued her or she asked her janitor to deliver a flower in a pot to him. The next morning, the janitor brought back his calling card asking if he might call. In June of 1904, they began to write letters to each other. The only letters to survive are Calvin’s letters to Grace. In the letters, Calvin complimented Grace and mentioned shared interests such as poetry. For example, he wrote, “What shall I do with so many blossoms with no one to help me look at them? Perhaps you can think and tell me” (June 21, 1904) On November 6, 1904, “Sometimes the best part of having you with me is after you are gone. For it is only when I am alone again that I realize how much pleasure you really made for me and remember that I expressed so little of it to you at parting…if you gave me much practice I might learn to do a little better.”
Grace, herself, characterized her marriage to Calvin Coolidge, October 4, 1905, as uniting people of “ vastly different temperaments and tastes” and commented that her mother “was not in her usual good health” on their wedding day. Actually Mrs. Goodhue opposed the timing of the marriage since she wanted the couple to wait until Grace could learn to bake bread. This was a home wedding with only relatives and a few friends. However the Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton at the time called the groom “one of the best known young lawyers of Northampton” and “prominent in Republican politics” so his impact on that Massachusetts city was already noted.

Grace, looking back at her marriage, treasured the simplicity of those early years. She called the knotted counterpane blanket that Calvin’s invalid mother made, as “our most precious heirloom” as they started their marriage. They set up housekeeping in rented rooms and then a half a house. She wrote, “What matter these trappings if love is strong and life is sweet?” She also agreed to a traditional marriage with her husband, Calvin, as the head of the family. This was based on economics as well. She stopped teaching and his law firm and political offices would be their sole income. She also became pregnant and gave birth on September 7,
1906 soon after they moved into their two family house.

Calvin’s description of the birth of John in his Autobiography showed how much he revered his wife and their new family. “The fragrance of the clematis which covered the bay window filled the room like a benediction, where the mother lay with her baby. We called him John in honor of my father. It was all very wonderful to us.”

However, as Calvin climbed the political ladder in state politics, Grace was left alone to raise a baby and be a homemaker while Calvin left for the week in Boston. She wondered, “I marvel at the father’s confidence in my ability to cope with the problem.” They also rather quickly added a second son, Calvin, Jr. on April 13, 1908, to the family so she had two boys to raise. She looked to the pastor of her church for help in raising the boys. (This set a pattern for at the White House, the assistant physician to the president, would once again be an older brother for the boys.) Grace was the one who laid out the train tracks and built the sport roadster with son John, not father Calvin.
Grace was concerned that her husband favored the younger son over the older one. Father Calvin Coolidge had a “strong bond” with his second son, “who bore a strong resemblance to the mother whom he had lost in boyhood.” This meant that his relationship with son John was strained and would become more so over the years. Five year old Calvin Junior had an operation for empyema to repair an infected lung and both parents hovered over this more frail son.

Grace’s fraternity, Pi Beta Phi, was a wonderful social outlet for Grace. She went to conventions and, in 1909 was president of the Western Massachusetts Alumnae Club. She traveled with her “sisters” to Berkeley, California in 1915 for the national biennial convention. She enjoyed the social events and parties, but this was abruptly interrupted with a telegram from Calvin announcing his race for Lieutenant Governor. She did not finish the tour of California sights, but took the next train home. Fortunately she returned to the East Coast since, her mother needed nursing and assistance back in Burlington. However, before Grace left California, she and her fraternity sisters vowed to write round robin letters not knowing that future historians would use these to gain insight into their lives and interests.

Political officials were not well paid in the early 1900’s, so Calvin Coolidge borrowed funds from his father and tightened his budget to support his family. However, he did not want to be beholden to anyone. As his political trajectory escalated, Frank Waterman Stearns, his political backer, offered the couple a house on Beacon Hill when Calvin was elected governor. They turned it down with Grace remaining in Northampton with the boys and Calvin taking on an extra room at Adams House in Boston where he stayed during the week. They had no car; Calvin took the train and public transportation to social affairs. Grace did hire a housekeeper. Cal also liked to buy hats for himself and Grace; buying clothes for Grace was his one extravagance.

The governorship could have been the pinnacle of Calvin’s career, but the Boston Police Strike made him well known for his stand on law and order and he was then a possible candidate for the Republicans’ national ticket in 1920. With Calvin’s strong stand against the strikers who had left the city of Boston without police protection, he thought this would be the end of his career. He had done his duty to call out the state militia, but probably alienated union supporters everywhere. Instead, newspaper headlines heralded words from his telegram to the A. F. of L. Union President, Samuel Gompers, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” Coolidge’s name became popular in Republican political circles; Mr. Stearns printed up the governor’s speeches in a small book entitled “Have Faith in Massachusetts” and these were distributed at the Chicago Republican convention. After Warren Harding was chosen to be the presidential nominee by Republican political bosses in smoke-filled rooms, an Oregon representative nominated Coolidge for Vice President and he won in a popular upsurge among the delegates. Coolidge was phoned when he was at Adams House with Grace. She was surprised that he accepted.

The landslide election victory of Harding and Coolidge over James M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt, brought a major change for Grace Coolidge. Her husband has been in politics all these years (1906-1920) while she had been on the periphery. Only when Calvin was mayor of Northampton, was she part of the political equation. Now things would change. They moved to Washington, D.C. to live at the Hotel Willard since no residence was provided for the Vice President. The boys were to board at Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, about one hour away. Grace no longer had daily responsibility for them. She was to shift to the social scene. She presided over “The Ladies of the Senate”, wives and hostesses of the U.S. Senators. She felt more prepared to play with train tracks, but Lois Marshall, wife of the out-going Vice President, gave friendly guidance to Grace to help break through the Washington façade. Grace’s natural charm was to help smooth this transition. Even acid tongued Alice Roosevelt Longworth (Theodore Roosevelt’s oldest daughter) could only compliment Grace. “She had a simplicity and charm, seemed thoroughly to enjoy her position as wife of the Vice President, was amused by all the official functions and attentions, yet was always absolutely natural and unimpressed by it all.” (Longworth, p. 326)

Summers are hot and humid in Washington, D.C. and it was common for political families to travel to cooler climates. Thus Calvin and Grace’s visit with his father, Col. John Coolidge, in August of 1923 while Warren and Florence Harding toured the West Coast was not so unusual. Trains and the new automobile made travel easier. Of course the dirt roads leading to Plymouth did not make it a travel destination. It was a farming community set apart by isolation and beauty.
Calvin’s Autobiography described the trembling in his father’s voice as he climbed the stairs of the farmhouse to tell the couple of the night’s passing of President Warren Harding. After praying, they went to the parlor and Grace brought in an oil lamp so they could decide their actions. Calvin wrote a telegram to Mrs. Harding. Then Vermont Congressman Porter Dale of Island Pond drove up and encouraged an immediate oath so that the Vice President could become President as soon as possible. Calvin turned to his father, a notary public, as the official in the room with the power to do this. Grace placed the family Bible on the table, Secretary Erwin Geisser typed up three copies of the official oath of office and at 2:47 a.m. on August 3rd, 1923 Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president.