Frances Cleveland

First Lady

• Born: July 21, 1864
• Birthplace: Buffalo, New York
• Died: October 29, 1947
• Place of death: Baltimore, Maryland

President:Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897

Overview

Frances Cleveland was truly a first among First Ladies. Frances was the first woman to marry a president in the White House, the first president’s wife to have a child in the White House, and the only First Lady to return to the White House for a second “term,” as her husband, Grover Cleveland, was the only president elected to two non-consecutive terms. She was a beautiful and intelligent woman who graduated from college and was very interested in the issues of the day, though she remained “nonpolitical.” She brought to the Cleveland presidencies a grace many feel was due to her natural goodness.

Early Life

Frances Clara Folsom was born on July 21, 1864, in Buffalo, New York, the only child of Oscar and Emma Folsom. She was called Frank for most of her youth. Frank was blessed with a strong family background. Her father was one of six children from a wealthy family; her grandfather, Colonel John B. Folsom, owned a mill and lived in a stately home in Folsomville, New York, just east of Buffalo. Her mother’s roots were also pedigreed. Emma Harmon came from the prestigious Harmon family of Caledonia, Vermont, who were early benefactors of the University of Rochester in New York.

Frank enjoyed a young girl’s life; she did well in school, and summers were largely spent in recreation with her family. However, just after her eleventh birthday, her father was killed in a carriage accident in Buffalo. Although Oscar Folsom was a lawyer, he left no will. He did leave an insurance policy of $5,000 and an estate worth $250,000, of which his partner, Grover Cleveland, acted as executor. Cleveland began to look after Frank and her mother. Without any indication of their future relationship, Frank began calling Cleveland, her future husband, Uncle Cleve.

Frank’s education began at Madame Brecker’s French Kindergarten. She attended Miss Bissel’s School for Young Ladies and attended the Medina Academy for Boys and Girls until 1879. Frank finally attended Central School in Buffalo, where she was popular both with teachers and among her fellow students. When she left in October, 1881, no longer interested in school, her family became concerned and obtained certification of her completed studies. In February, 1882, at age seventeen, Frances was admitted with advanced standing to Wells College in Aurora, New York, one of the first liberal arts colleges for women in the United States. She would become only the second First Lady to earn a college degree, following Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes.

Frances loved college. As a student, she had diverse academic interests. Although she was not a bookworm, she did have a decidedly literary taste, reading the classics often, and did well even in those subjects that did not really interest her. She never missed a lesson while at college and was always prepared for class. She was considered a first-class English scholar and was very interested in the arts, especially playing the piano, painting, and photography. She enjoyed the social sciences, and her friends adored her for her storytelling ability. She would often tell a story relating to her own life or would simply spin one about her girlfriends.

Social codes were closely monitored on the Wells campus; Grover Cleveland was forced to ask Frances’s mother and the principal for permission to write to her. Grover, nonetheless, was constantly lavishing attention, gifts, and flowers on Frances throughout her days at Wells. Even so, it is unclear just when the relationship between the two turned to romance; in fact, it was thought that the object of Cleveland’s affection was Frances’s mother. After graduating in 1885, Frances spent the summer at the Folsom farm with her grandfather. That September, before she left on a trip to Europe, a graduation gift from her family, she received a formal letter from Grover—who was by now governor of New York—proposing marriage.

Marriage and Family

Grover’s wedding to Frances, the first of a president to be held in the White House, was a newspaper spectacle. The press accounts were numerous and narrative, with detailed reporting of the wedding and honeymoon. Even so, the press was barred from the actual ceremony. Grover’s sister Rose, a direct woman, told reporters the wedding would be “a very private affair.” This infuriated the newspapers and encouraged them to produce more stories and even to make them up.

On the day of the wedding, June 2, 1886, crowds gathered long before the ceremony. They covered the lawn and peered into the windows, thus affording them a view of hundreds of potted plants and fresh-cut flowers. The ceremony, which Grover had specified should be simple, lasted only ten minutes. Grover had also decided to strike out the word obey and insert the word keep. The president was forty-nine when he married. Having taken her vows just seven weeks before her twenty-second birthday, Frances Cleveland became the youngest woman ever to become First Lady.

The couple planned to honeymoon at Deer Park, a resort in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Grover wanted to avoid reporters, and the couple managed initially to elude the press. However, upon arrival they found that the newspaper reporters were already there, and the newlyweds awoke the next morning to a swarm of newsmen, many of whom had camped out around the honeymoon cottage or were up in the trees with binoculars. Once the crowds were controlled, however, the honeymoon was quite an arcadian affair—Grover fished, and Frances took long walks, enjoying the air and scenery. She was reported to have drunk the pure mountain water using only her hands, indicating just how comfortable she was among the beauties of nature.

The Clevelands, notwithstanding their disparity in age, were a very close couple. Grover openly displayed his love for his wife and she displayed hers for him. The campaign of 1888, for example, was a nasty one with ugly charges that Grover abused Frances. She wrote a letter, widely circulated in public, indicating that she could “wish the women of our country no greater blessing than that their homes and lives may be as happy, and their husbands may be as kind, attentive and considerate, and affectionate as mine.”

Grover was determined to keep Frances far away from the scrutiny of the press. During the first Cleveland administration, the couple spent a great deal of time at Oak View, an old country farm near Georgetown in the District of Columbia that Grover had bought before their marriage. During Cleveland’s second administration, they rented a house called Woodley and spent as much time as possible at Gray Gables, their home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which they had purchased during their years in New York between the two Cleveland administrations. Their first child, Ruth, was born in New York. By the time the Clevelands moved back into the White House, Frances was expecting their second child, Esther, who was the first presidential child to be born in the White House. Their third daughter, Marion, was born on Cape Cod during the second term. It was not until after their White House years that their two sons—Richard, born in Princeton, New Jersey, and Francis, born at Gray Gables—became part of the family.

Early in Grover’s second term in the White House, he was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth. The operation he required, which would remove part of his jaw, was kept secret to avoid alarming the public in the midst of the Panic of 1893, the aftermath of a stock market collapse. The surgery was successfully performed on a friend’s yacht, and Frances proved adept at answering questions and allaying suspicion that arose from the president’s five-day absence.

Frances cried as she left the White House for the second time, in March of 1897, as did many members of the staff. She had always taken a personal interest in their lives and had given them birthday and Christmas gifts each year. Grover and Frances thought about returning to New York but decided that a small town would be better for the children. At the urging of Andrew West, dean of Princeton University, they chose to relocate to Princeton. They named their new home Westlands in his honor. In 1904, after thirteen-year-old Ruth’s death from diphtheria, they bought a four-bedroom cottage in Tamworth, New Hampshire, later remodeled to twenty-seven rooms with thirteen bedrooms. It was named Interment.

Grover Cleveland suffered minor ailments for several years, but in the spring of 1908, he became seriously ill. He and Frances went to Lakewood, New Jersey, where he had found the climate beneficial; however, when he felt no better, he asked to be taken home. He returned to Westlands, where he died on June 24, 1908, leaving an estate in excess of $250,000. Frances sold some small properties but retained the houses at Princeton and Tamworth. She was remarried to Thomas Preston, a professor at Wells and Princeton, in 1913. She never accepted the five-thousand-dollar annual pension awarded to presidential widows.

Presidency and First Ladyship

Frances enjoyed performing her social responsibilities as First Lady and was good at it. She enchanted everyone she came in contact with, and Washington, D.C., society was amazed by her poise. Her handling of receiving lines was impressive, and it was said that she never made a false step. While people admired her grace and beauty, it was her naturalness and cordiality that won their hearts. Americans from all walks of life accepted Frances as the ideal First Lady, and she served as a model for her successors.

Frances made both the White House and herself available to people of all stations. People were able to move throughout the White House freely and often made themselves at home in the East Room. Except for a few private rooms on the second floor, the White House was truly the people’s house. The most conspicuous examples of Frances’s democratic and earnest interest in people were her weekly receptions for working women. Held every Saturday afternoon, these receptions won her the respect of lower- and middle-class women; she made the events a part of both of her terms as First Lady.

Frances was such a celebrity that her clothing and grooming habits became the object of public scrutiny. After one newspaper described her as wearing a dress that was “cut low in the neck . . . the arms bare from the shoulder to the elbow,” the Women’s Christian Temperance Union demanded that she stop wearing such gowns. While Frances was a supporter of the temperance movement, she continued to wear the clothes she preferred. When the newspapers reported that she was not fond of the bustle and had stopped wearing it, the bustle quickly became part of fashion history.

Fan clubs, called Frances Cleveland Influence Clubs or Frankie Clubs, sprang up across the United States. During the 1892 presidential campaign, against the wishes of Grover Cleveland, Frances’s picture appeared beside his own on many campaign posters. No other First Lady had been thus featured on campaign material.

Advertisers also began to take advantage of Frances’s popularity and began to use her name and image without her permission to sell candies, liver pills, soaps, ashtrays, and even ladies’ undergarments. One magazine advertiser claimed that she owed her beautiful complexion to the use of arsenic pills. A bill was introduced in Congress in 1888 in order to make such false claims a crime, but it did not pass.

Legacy

Even though her popularity brought with it a great deal of attention, Frances did not feel that it was proper for women to speak in public. Because of that, it has been said that she was totally nonpolitical. The reality could not be further from the truth. Frances, though not political in the traditional sense, had her own viewpoints on issues. While it is true that she politely declined to support many of the causes that sought her sponsorship, two important points have been overlooked. First, while Frances did not feel that it was proper for women to speak in public, she did not feel this applied to all women. Rather, she was likely speaking for herself. Second, her popularity itself translated into political influence. Though Frances personally avoided the issue of women’s suffrage, her popularity made her a visible role model for women.

Frances Cleveland’s legacy is defined not so much by the many firsts that history ascribes to her but by her thoroughly democratic perspective on society and the role of the White House in it. She firmly believed that the White House was the people’s house and that those who served in it had an obligation to the people.

Bibliography

Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power. Vol. 1. New York: William Morrow, 1990.

Hoover, Irwin Hood. Forty-two Years in the White House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934.

Sadler, Christine. Children in the White House. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967.

Severn, Sue. “Frances (Clara) Folsom Cleveland.” In American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy, edited by Lewis L. Gould. New York: Garland, 1996.