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Saturday 10 May 2014

Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th President of the United States was born on March 18, 1837.

His father Richard Falley Cleveland was a Presbyterian minister who was originally from Connecticut. His mother Ann (née Neal) Cleveland was the daughter of a bookseller.

Grover Cleveland was drafted to fight in the Civil War but paid a 32-year-old Polish immigrant to serve in his place.

Cleveland was elected to the presidency twice—in 1884 and 1892—and was one of the two Democrats (alongside Woodrow Wilson) elected to the presidency in the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1933.

As President Grover Cleveland and his wife were moving out of the White House in 1889, she told a staff member, "Now, Jerry, I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want to find everything just as it is now, when we come back again."  Cleveland won another term and moved back in four years later.

Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland was the only president in history to hold the job of a hangman. He was once the sheriff of Erie County, New York, and twice had to spring the trap at a hanging.

His first bid for the presidency was nearly derailed by a sex scandal. The press discovered that, as a 37-year-old bachelor, he had accepted responsibility for the paternity of a child born out of wedlock. When his aides asked him for a response to the lurid headlines, he said simply: "Tell them the truth." The public were impressed with his honesty, and the damage was limited.

The mother had been involved with several different men at the time and wasn't sure which man was the father. Cleveland stepped up and paid child support because he was the only bachelor among the potential candidates.

President Grover Cleveland first met his future wife Frances Folsom when he was 27 and she was a newborn. He was a friend of her widowed mother Emma and bought her a baby carriage, Cleveland helped raise her following her father's death. He then married her when she turned 21 (he was 49).

President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom on June 2, 1886. The ceremony was the first and only presidential nuptials performed in the White House, although numerous relatives of presidents married at the White House through the years. John Philip Sousa led the band. 

Frances Folsom married Grover Cleveland on June 2, 1886, becoming the First Lady of the United States.

Frances Cleveland originally met the president while visiting the White House.

At 21 years old, Frances Folsom Cleveland was the youngest First Lady.

Frances Cleveland by Anders Zorn (1899)

His second child, Esther, was born on September 9, 1893. She was the only baby born in the White House.


The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland’s baby daughter, Ruth. She later died from diphtheria at the age of 12.

During his second term, President Cleveland noticed a rough spot in his mouth, which turned out to be cancer. Fearing news of this might cause financial panic, he underwent secret surgery on June 13, 1893 to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw on his friend’s yacht off the coast of Long Island, under the cover story of being on a four-day fishing trip. The operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president's death.

In the autumn of 1907 Cleveland fell seriously ill. He suffered a heart attack the following year and died on June 24 at age 71. His last words were, "I have tried so hard to do right."

Grover Cleveland is buried in the Princeton Cemetery of the Nassau Presbyterian Church.

Source The Independent

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