Grace (Anna) Coolidge - Reference

US first lady (1923–9), born in Burlington, Vermont, USA. She taught at a school for deaf children before she married Calvin Coolidge in 1903. Socially active and a lively personality, she was a great asset to her taciturn husband. She was a popular first lady but suffered personally from the tragedy of the death of her younger son from blood poisoning.

Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge (January 3, 1879 – July 8, 1957) was wife of Calvin Coolidge and First Lady of the United States from 1923 to 1929.

Grace Anna Goodhue grew up in the Green Mountain city of Burlington, Vermont, the only child of Andrew and Lemira B.

In Northampton she met Calvin Coolidge; they moved into half of a duplex two weeks before their first son John Coolidge was born, and she budgeted expenses well within the income of a struggling small-town lawyer.

To Grace Coolidge may be credited a full share in her husband's rise in politics. As Coolidge was rising to the rank of governor, the family kept the duplex;

In 1921, as wife of the Vice President, Grace Coolidge went from her housewife's routine into Washington society and quickly became the most popular woman in the capital.

After Harding's death and Calvin Coolidge's succession to the Presidency, she planned the new administration's social life as her husband wanted it: unpretentious but dignified. As she wrote later, she was "I, and yet, not I--this was the wife of the President of the United States and she took precedence over me...."

For greater privacy in Northampton, the Coolidges bought "The Beeches," a large house with spacious grounds. Calvin Coolidge died there in 1933.

Preceded by: Florence Harding

First Lady of the United States 1923-1929

Succeeded by: Lou Henry Hoover

First Ladies of the United States

M. Washington • A. Adams • M. Jefferson Randolph • D. Madison • E. Monroe • L. Adams • E. Donelson • S. Jackson • A. Van Buren • A. Harrison • J. Harrison • L. Tyler • P. Tyler • J. Tyler • S. Polk • M. Taylor • A. Fillmore • J. Pierce • H. Lane • M. Lincoln • E. Johnson • J. Grant • L. Hayes • L. Garfield • M. McElroy • R. Cleveland • F. Cleveland • C. Harrison • F. Cleveland • I. McKinley • Edith Roosevelt • H. Taft • Ellen Wilson • Edith Wilson • F. Harding • G. Coolidge • L. Hoover • Eleanor Roosevelt • B. Truman • M. Eisenhower • J. Kennedy • Lady Bird Johnson • P. Nixon • B. Ford • R. Carter • N. Reagan • B. Bush • H. Clinton • L. Bush

Reference

Original text based on White House biography