White House History Quarterly 54 - White House Weddings

WHITE HOUSE HISTORY Quarterly

White House Weddings The Journal of T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I A T I O N Number 5 4

Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 54, originally released in print form in 2019. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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WHITE HOUSE HISTORY Quarterly

White House Weddings The Journal of THE WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Summer 2019, Number 54

CONTRIBUTORS

the white house historical association Board of Directors

chairman

w i lli am adai r is a frame historian, conservator, and gilder in Washington, D.C.

Frederick J. Ryan Jr.

vice chairman and treasurer John F. W. Rogers

secretary

James I. McDaniel

president

Stewart D. McLaurin John T. Behrendt, Michael Beschloss, John T. Behrendt, Teresa Carlson, Jean Case, Cathy Gorn, Janet A. Howard, Knight Kiplinger, Martha Joynt Kumar, Anita McBride, Mike McCurry, Robert M. McGee, Ann Stock, Ben C. Sutton Jr., Tina Tchen

ex officio David S. Ferriero, Carla Hayden, Tom Mayes, Kaywin Feldman, David J. Skorton

directors emeriti

John H. Dalton, Nancy M. Folger, Elise K. Kirk, Harry G. Robinson III, Gail Berry West

white house history quarterly editor

William Seale

vice president of publishing and executive editor Marcia Mallet Anderson

editorial and production director Lauren McGwin

senior editorial and production manager Kristen A. Hunter

editorial and production manager Elyse Werling

editorial assistant Rebecca Durgin

consulting editor Ann Hofstra Grogg

consulting design Pentagram

editorial advisory Mac Keith Griswold Scott Harris Anthony Pitch Lydia Barker Tederick

b et h anee b em i s is a museum specialist in the Division of Political and Military History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. r o b ert g r o g g is a specialist in publications and wayside exhibits for parks. He is retired from the National Park Service’s Interpretive Design Center at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. ly n da laur enb imrcdg w j oi n h niss o n r o b b is and the former first editorial production lady of Virginia and the director at the White daughter of President House Historical Lyndon B. Johnson.

Association and a regular contributor to White House laur enQuarterly.

History m c g w i n is editorial and production ch uck at r othe b bWhite is a former director officer the United States House in Historical Marine Corps. served as Association andHe a regular governor of Virginia contributor to White from House 1982 to 1986, and as History Quarterly. a United States senator from 1989 2001. ch uck r ountil b b is a former officer in the United States ly n da Corps. b i r d He j o hserved n s o nas Marine r o b b is the former first governor of Virginia from lady and 1982of toVirginia 1986, and asthe daughter of President a United States senator Lyndon B. until Johnson. from 1989 2001.

the editor wishes to thank

The Office of the Curator, The White House; Selwa “Lucky” Roosevelt; and Joanna Sturm

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selwa “lucky” roosevelt was chief of protocol of the United States from 1982 to 1989 following a career in journalism covering social and current events in Washington, D.C. She serves as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Blair House Restoration Fund. wa lt e r wa s h i n g t o n is a practicing attorney in Charles Town, West Virginia. He owns and maintains Harewood, the historic home built in 1770 by his ancestor Samuel Washington, the brother of George Washington. elyse w er li n g is editorial and production manager at the White House Historical Association.

MOUNT V ERNON LADIES AS SOCIATION

CONTENTS

Long before there was a White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there was a White House wedding. On January 6, 1759, George Washington married Martha Custis at her home, White House Plantation, not far from Williamsburg, Virginia. The ceremony was depicted in this engraving after a painting by Junius Brutus Sterns, 1849.

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FOREWORD

A WHITE HOUSE WEDDING REMEMBERED

william seale

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lynda johnson robb and chuck robb with stewart m c laurin

elyse werling

62 WHAT FLAVOR IS THE CAKE? White House Weddings and the Public’s Curiosity

WHITE HOUSE WEDDINGS AND RECEPTIONS THROUGH THE YEARS

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A FIRST DAUGHTER’S WHITE HOUSE WEDDING: Etiquette Wars and a Celebration at Stephen Decatur’s House lauren m c gwin

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NELLIE GRANT MARRIES IN THE EAST ROOM: Rediscovered Relics of a White House Wedding william adair

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ALICE ROOSEVELT WEDS NICHOLAS LONGWORTH: A First Daughter’s Wedding in the East Room

b et h anee b em i s

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PRESIDENTIAL SITES QUARTERLY FEATURE A Celebration at Harewood: A Washington Home for a Madison Wedding robert grogg and walter washington

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REFLECTIONS: Creatively Teaching White House History stewart d. m c laurin

selwa “lucky ” roosevelt

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FOREWORD

Marrying at Home

Weddings at home bring sentimental joy to a family, and this is no less true of weddings of those resident at the White House. There have been few through two centuries, and this issue of White House History takes a long look at them.

Not that we can be absolutely certain we have captured them all. There was, for example, a couple employed as servants by President and Mrs. John Adams who eloped, but whether this took place at the unfinished President’s House where they lived, or elsewhere, we don’t know.

Mrs. Adams, who was not consulted, was furious. And there is another story, relayed on the opposite page, of a young couple who, during the Civil War, may have been married in President Lincoln’s East Room. You be the judge of the evidence.

The first daughter of a president to marry in the White House was Monroe’s daughter Maria Hester, who was entertained some days later with a ball at Commodore Stephen Decatur’s new house, only to hear the news of his death in a duel soon after. The next first daughter’s White House wedding was that of President Ulysses S. Grant’s only daughter, Nellie, who married Algernon Sartoris, a British dandy she met on a European tour, in a lavish, palmand-orchid-lined East Room on May 21, 1874.

President Grant requested funds from Congress to redecorate the room and spent most of the appropriation replacing Andrew Jackson’s 1829 glass chandeliers with monster gas-burning confections of even more glass. Congress was proud of them to the day in 1902 when they were taken down and rescued from the auction house floor to ornament committee rooms in the Capitol, where they still hang.

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Nellie’s wedding started a trend. White House weddings thereafter were private home events for the public to enjoy in newspapers, magazines, and in person through the iron fence surrounding the house. Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice, married in 1906, with a thousand invited guests filling the East Room to an extent not seen since Lincoln’s funeral. Next was Wilson’s daughter Jessie in 1913, whose elaborately coiffed bridesmaids carried long shepherd’s crooks. She was followed in 1914 by a second Wilson daughter, Nell, in a very small wedding that included only the family circle and the cabinet.

Articles in this issue give you an intimate look at the modern weddings at the White House.

President Johnson’s daughter Luci had her reception in the East Room, but spoke her vows at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and her sister Lynda’s marriage and reception were both held in the East Room. The most recent White House wedding of note was that of President Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, which took place in the Rose Garden outside the Oval Office. In 2008, George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna chose to marry at the Prairie Chapel Ranch in Texas but later celebrated with a reception in the White House. Like them all, no one who attended or read about these private family events ever forgot less the glamour than the inevitable intimacy that for a few moments was shared by every American.

william seale editor, WHITE HOUSE HISTORY QUARTERLY

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T O P : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H T I E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N BOT TOM: COURTESY OF THE INDIANA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

The couple approaching the President’s House in the painting above by Lefevre Cranstone (c. 1857–61) brings to mind the article (left) featured in the Indianapolis News just a few days before the 1906 wedding of Alice Roosevelt: “Probably no Indiana woman was more interested in the White House bride of today than was Mrs. Elizabeth Chandler, of this city, who, she says, was a White House bride in 1862. . . . It was a wedding in state that came as a climax to the elopement from the homes of the bride and bridegroom, because the parents of the bride objected to her marriage until she was older A marriage license was obtained in Virginia and James Chandler and the young woman who became his bride fled to Washington to be married. Arriving there late in the day, Mrs. Chandler said they became rather bewildered as to where to go or whom they should ask to perform the ceremony. Their only knowledge of Washington was the location of the big Federal buildings. In despair they concluded to enter some of the buildings in search of a pastor or person empowered to officiate in weddings. Most of the buildings were closed, and after making a round of several buildings they thought of the White House. There they found a haven.

President Lincoln was probably not very busy that evening in March, for when he heard of a young couple at the door seeking some place to be married, he at once proceeded to conduct the wedding so far as possible. ‘Abe Lincoln led us up some steps and into the White House, and then into a big room all draped with flags,’ Mrs. Chandler said.

‘He sent out for a Baptist minister, and when he arrived a lot of women came into the room. Lincoln stood right near us, and he and Mrs. Lincoln were the first to shake hands with us after we were married. And I was so scared that I don’t remember what they said, and I never remembered what the Baptist minister’s name was, although they told us twice. Then they took us into another room and called in several people, all shaking hands with us and asking us where we were going. Some were Northerners, and we Virginians didn’t know until then how nice the Northerners were. Well, after shaking hands with everybody we sat down for a while, and then they spread a fine dinner for us in a room with the longest table I ever saw. They served something they said was hot punch, and everybody would stand up and drink, while someone said something.’ Mrs. Chandler also said that after the dinner, as it was a dark blustering night, President and Mrs. Lincoln would not allow Mr. and Mrs. Chandler to leave. The next day Mr. and Mrs. Chandler finally went back to their home, where they were forgiven and the neighborhood was astonished over the White House features of the wedding.”

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O P P O S I T E : W E D D I N G I N V I TA T I O N , R U T H E R F O R D B . H A Y E S P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M S

White House WEDDINGS & Receptions

Through the Years

elyse w er li ng

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White House Wedding Ceremonies and Receptions THROUGH TIME March 29, 1812 The First Lady’s Sister Lucy Payne Washington to Thomas Todd Dolley Madison’s widowed sister, Lucy Payne Washington, married Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd in the first documented marriage in the White House.

@2 James Monroe Administration March 9, 1820 The President’s Daughter Maria Monroe to Samuel Laurence Gouverneur Maria Hester Monroe was 18 years old when she wed Samuel Laurence Gouverneur in a small White House ceremony. Society was included in greater numbers in the many receptions that followed.

@2 John Quincy Adams Administration February 25, 1828 The President’s Son John Adams to Mary Catherine Hellen This wedding, the first White House wedding of a president’s son, took place in the Elliptical Saloon, known today as the Blue Room.

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Andrew Jackson Administration April 10, 1832 The President’s Grand-Niece Mary A. Eastin to Lucius J. Polk November 29, 1832 The President’s Ward Mary Anne Lewis to Alphonse Pageot Two East Room wedding ceremonies were conducted in the Jackson White House in 1832. In the spring, Mary Eastin married Lucius J. Polk, a politician and planter from Tennessee and cousin of the future President James K. Polk. In November Mary Lewis wed Alphonse Joseph Yves Pageot, secretary of the French legation.

@2 John Tyler Administration January 31, 1842 The President’s Daughter

Elizabeth Tyler to William Waller

Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Tyler, was married in an East Room ceremony to William N. Waller, a young attorney and family neighbor from Williamsburg, Virginia. It is thought to have been the only public appearance made by her invalid mother, First Lady Letitia Tyler.

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SILHOUETTES: COLLECTION OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY E A S T I N A N D L E W I S : C O L L E C T I O N O F F R E D A N D K E L L I G I L L H A M / P H O T O G R A P H B Y H O L LY D O B B S L U C Y WA S H I N G T O N : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I A T I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N

James Madison Administration

Mary Anne Lewis and Mary A. Eastin attributed to Ralph E. W. Earl, c. 1831.

Silhouettes of the Adams family made by Jarvis F. Hanks in 1829, including John and Mary Catherine, who married at the White House in 1828, and their daughter, Mary Louisa (b. 1828), in the middle row.

Lucy Payne Washington Todd by Matthew Harris Jouett, 1817–20.

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Ulysses S. Grant Administration May 21, 1874 The President’s Daughter

Nellie Grant to Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris

Eighteen-year-old Ellen (“Nellie”) Wrenshall Grant wed Algernon Sartoris, a well-to-do English singer, in the East Room of the White House, which had been redecorated with elaborate architectural details for the highly publicized event.

@2 Rutherford B. Hayes Administration June 19, 1878 The President’s Niece

Emily Hayes Platt to Russell Hastings

Frances Folsom Cleveland, on her wedding day (left) and in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (below) with President Grover Cleveland, June 2, 1886.

When Russell Hastings, Rutherford B. Hayes’s Civil War aide-de-camp, visited his former brigade commander at the White House in 1877, he was reacquainted with Emily Platt. A few months later the two were married in the Blue Room.

Grover Cleveland Administration June 2, 1886

President Grover Cleveland to Frances Folsom The only president to marry in the White House, Grover Cleveland wed Frances Folsom in the Blue Room. Only twentyeight guests were present. The bride was the daughter of the president’s late law partner.

After serving as her estate administrator and guardian, Cleveland proposed while she attended school at Wells College in New York.

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WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION / WHITE HOUSE C OLLEC TION

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G R O V E R A N D F R A N C E S C L E V E L A N D : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N FRANCES CLEVELAND AND NELLIE GRANT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS E M I L Y P L AT T A N D I N V I TA T I O N : R U T H E R F O R D B . H A Y E S P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M S

Emily Hayes Platt, 1877

Nellie Grant Sartoris, 1874

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Theodore Roosevelt Administration February 17, 1906 The President’s Daughter

Alice Roosevelt to Congressman Nicholas Longworth

The president’s eldest daughter married Congressman Nicholas Longworth in the newly renovated East Room.

@2 Woodrow Wilson Administration November 25, 1913 The President’s Daughter

Jessie Wilson to Francis B. Sayre May 7, 1914

August 7, 1918 The President’s Niece

Alice Wilson to Isaac Stuart McElroy Jr. Three family weddings took place in the White House during the Wilson administration. Second daughter Jessie married Francis Bowes Sayre Sr., who later served as high commissioner of the Philippines. The president’s youngest daughter Eleanor married Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo.

Wilson’s niece Alice married the Rev. Isaac Stuart McElroy Jr.

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Crowds waiting outside the White House for Alice Roosevelt’s (above) wedding, 1906

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T O P : L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S / B O T T O M : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

The President’s Daughter Eleanor Wilson to William Gibbs McAdoo

ALICE WILSON: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / A L L O T H E R S : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

Jessie Wilson, 1913

Eleanor Wilson, 1914

Jessie Wilson and her wedding party, 1913

Alice Wilson, 1918

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July 30, 1942

The President’s Adviser Harry Hopkins to Louise Macy Harry Hopkins, who helped administer the president’s New Deal programs and served as his secretary of commerce, married Louise Macy, a former fashion editor, in the Yellow Oval Room. At Roosevelt’s request, the couple lived in the White House until December 1943, when they moved to a town house in nearby Georgetown.

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Lyndon Johnson Administration August 6, 1966

The President’s Daughter Luci Johnson to Patrick J. Nugent December 9, 1967

The President’s Daughter Lynda Bird Johnson to Captain Charles S. Robb A private reception was held at the White House following the wedding ceremony of Luci Johnson to Patrick John Nugent at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The following year, her elder sister Lynda married Charles Robb in the East Room.

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Franklin Roosevelt joins Harry Hopkins and his bride, Louise Macy, in the Yellow Oval Room for a wedding day photograph, 1942.

F R A N K L I N D . R O O S E V E LT P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M

Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration

T O P L E F T : L B J P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y / T O P R I G H T : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / B O T T O M : G E T T Y I M A G E S

Sisters Luci Johnson (left and below) and Lynda Johnson (above) celebrated their marriages in the White House sixteen months apart.

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Richard M. Nixon Administration June 12, 1971

The President’s Daughter Tricia Nixon to Edward Finch Cox Tricia Nixon married Edward Cox in a televised Rose Garden ceremony. It was a rainy day, but the precipitation stopped just long enough for the ceremony to take place outside as planned. The reception was held in the East Room.

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President Richard Nixon walks his daughter down the aisle in the Rose Garden (right), and the bride and groom turn to recess down the aisle following the ceremony, 1971.

William J. Clinton Administration May 28, 1994

The First Lady’s Brother Anthony Rodham to Nicole Boxer

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George W. Bush Administration May 10, 2008

Jenna Bush and Henry Hager married on May 8, 2008, at her parents’ Prairie Chapel Ranch. They later celebrated at the White House with a reception on June 21, 2008.

@2 Barack Obama Administration October 19, 2013

The President’s Photographer Pete Souza to Patti Lease President Obama hosted the wedding of Pete Souza and Pattie Lease in the Rose Garden of the White House.

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T H I S PA G E : R I C H A R D N I X O N P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M / O P P O S I T E : G E O R G E W. B U S H P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M

The President’s Daughter Jenna Bush to Henry Hager

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Jenna Bush Hager and Henry Hager cut a cake at their White House reception, June 21, 2008.

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A First Daughter’s WHITE HOUSE WEDDING: Etiquette Wars and a Celebration at Stephen Decatur’s House Maria Hester Monroe Marries Samuel Laurence Gouverneur

P O R T R A I T : C O U R T E S Y M A R Y FA I R FA X K I R K P I C K L E

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Washington, but the Monroe wedding was the first marriage of a president’s child. The groom was President Monroe’s private secretary, who had lived at the White House from the beginning of his administration. As the youngest son of Nicholas and Hester Kortright Gouverneur, a prominent New York family, he was also Maria’s first cousin on her mother’s side and considered quite the catch. He was “a man of decidedly social tastes” and enjoyed throwing lavish entertainments with his wife after their White House years.1 The engagement ring presented to Maria was a rose-cut diamond placed in a delicate gold setting.2 Four years Maria’s senior at age 21, Samuel doted on his young bride and was heard remarking before the wedding “I consider myself the luckiest young man in the republic, for the most adorable creature within its borders has chosen me from all her suitors to be a White House bridegroom.”3 The grand ball at Decatur House in honor of the wedding party should have been a celebratory event. Instead, it would be shrouded by political agendas, social intrigue, and the death of Stephen Decatur.

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previous spread

It is speculated that this portrait of Maria Monroe, painted c. 1820 by Charles Bird King, portrays her wearing the white satin dress that she wore for both her wedding and a New Year’s Day reception held at the White House that year. above

This watercolor made by Eugène Vaile in 1822 depicts visitors arriving at Stephen Decatur’s house by carriage as they would have the evening he welcomed society to a wedding reception for President Monroe’s youngest daughter. opposite

Newspaper announcements provided the only public declaration of the Monroe–Gouverneur nuptials. Today Maria’s wedding ring and sculptural bust are preserved in the collection of the James Monroe Museum and Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIAITON

on the evening of saturday, March 18, 1820, carriages transported prominent Washington socialites, politicians, diplomats, and naval and army officers along Pennsylvania Avenue to Commodore Stephen Decatur’s new house, “fit for fine entertainments” and designed by the well-known architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe. From the elegant front hall they were guided by glittering lamps up the grand winding staircase and received in the second-story drawing room by their illustrious host and his wife Susan. The lamp-lit rooms, furnished with fine furniture and paintings, along with the prime location of the house on the President’s Square across from the White House, spoke volumes about the wealth and prestige of the naval hero who lived there. It seems fitting that the Decaturs be the first to hold a ball for the president’s daughter, Maria Hester Monroe, on the occasion of her marriage to her cousin Samuel Laurence Gouverneur.

Maria Monroe and Samuel Gouverneur’s wedding was the second to take place at the White House. The first was the wedding of First Lady Dolley Madison’s sister, Lucy Payne

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B A S R E L I E F A N D R I N G : JA M E S M O N R O E M U S E U M CLIPPING: GENEAOLOGY BANK

Maria Monroe’s wedding was highly anticipated by a Washington society that was accustomed to being included in such occasions, so it came as a bitter disappointment to a great many who were not invited. Washington society was still getting used to the way the Monroes handled social events in contrast to former President James Madison and First Lady Dolley Madison, whose informality in manners the Monroes actually opposed. During the six years they had lived in Washington while Monroe served in Madison’s cabinet, they rarely entertained. Thus they began their presidential tenure with little favor in society. James Monroe, an experienced diplomat and once minister to France, sought to model the Executive Mansion after the strict, formal rules of the European courts in order to place the United States in a more favorable and sophisticated light with the rest of the world. After all, a second war against Great Britain had been won, and the new nation stood firmly on its own.

To symbolize national pride and the Era of Good Feelings, Monroe furnished the newly rebuilt President’s House richly with French-inspired court furniture and implemented new formal rules of etiquette that limited interaction with the public.4 First Lady Elizabeth Kortright Monroe, frail, sickly, and unsociable, was constantly compared to the friendly and lively former first lady, Dolley Madison,5 and was said to be aloof, cold, and reserved.6 She was especially criticized for not making first calls on the wives of the diplomatic corps and other dignitaries, a practice begun by Dolley Madison.7 Instead, as first lady Mrs. Monroe structured social activities at the White House on the model of the European court, where the wives of diplomats called on royalty first.8 John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, and his wife Louisa were friends and advocates of the Monroes and

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often defended their actions.9 Louisa Catherine Adams observed, “I am more and more astonished every time I see her [Mrs. Monroe], at the general dislike she seems to have inspired; and can only account for it from the evident superiority of her deportment to the Ladies who surround her— She was dressed in white and gold made in the highest style of fashion, and moved not like a Queen . . . but like a Goddess.”10 John Quincy Adams, knowing the foreign ministers and their wives demanded special attention, advised President Monroe to invite them to the reconstructed White House before it opened to the public for the first time on January 1, 1818. The diplomats were temporarily appeased and the next day “insinuated how much they had been gratified by the distinction with which they had been treated at the great house.”11 But because the first lady refused to make social calls, the diplomat’s wives responded in turn, and the resentment festered.

The etiquette of social calls became a widely debated subject. In diplomatic and state letters to President Monroe John Quincy Adams warned: It has, I understand from you, been made a subject of complaint to you . . . that his wife is equally negligent of her supposed duty, in omitting similar attention to the ladies of every member of either house, who visit the during the session. . . . I never heard a suggestion that it was due in courtesy, from a head of department, to pay a first visit to senators, or from his wife to visit the wife of any member of Congress. . . . When I learnt that there was such an expectation entertained by the senators in general, I quickly learnt from other quarters that,

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P H O T O G R A P H B Y G E N E R U N I O N / C O U R T E S Y H A LT O N FA M I LY

INVITATIONS, SOCIETY, AND ETIQUETTE WARS

opposite

The snobbish demeanor of Eliza Monroe Hay, eldest daughter of President James Monroe, alienated her from Washington society. Acting as White House hostess in place of her ailing mother, Eliza dominated the planning of Maria Monroe’s wedding, offending those who were not invited to the White House ceremony. This miniature by S. Caruson, c. 1810, captures Eliza in her twenties.

if complied with, it would give great offence to the members of the House of Representatives unless extended also to them. These visits of ceremony would not only be a very useless waste of time, but incompatible with the discharge of the real and important duties of the departments. . . . In paying the first visit to ladies coming to this place as strangers, Mrs. Adams could draw no discrimination; to visit all would be impossible.12 Adams continued to describe what he considered the absurdity of society’s expectations in his diary on January 22, 1818: All ladies arriving here as strangers, it seems, expect to be visited by the wives of the heads of Departments, and even by the President’s wife.

Mrs. Madison subjected herself to this torture, which she felt very severely, but from which, having begun the practice, she never found an opportunity of receding. Mrs. Monroe neither pays nor returns any visits. . . . My wife informed Mrs. Monroe that she should adhere to her principle, but not on any question of etiquette, as she did not exact of any lady that she should visit her.13 Speaker of the House Henry Clay even told Louisa Catherine Adams that he “intended to bring a bill to the house on the subject of etiquette,” an indication of how important the matter of etiquette had become and how quickly it had escalated.14 Much of the controversy over etiquette actually stemmed from the actions of the Monroes’ eldest daughter, Elizabeth Monroe Hay, called Eliza, who, because of her mother’s failing health, had assumed the role of first lady. She lived in the White House with her husband George Hay, a prominent New York attorney. Having been

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educated in Paris at the well-known boarding school of Madame Campan, the former lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette, she had adopted the European court customs and a snobbish attitude.15 If Elizabeth Monroe was responsible for starting the etiquette war, Eliza Hay fueled the fire. And it was the arrogant Eliza who planned her younger sister’s wedding.

WEDDING AT THE WHITE HOUSE Maria Monroe, seventeen years younger than Eliza, was often described as “plain and big-boned” and shy, and she was easily overshadowed by her domineering sister.16 Ever concerned with etiquette, Eliza did not believe her 17-year-old sister could manage planning the wedding and subsequent White House receptions, known then as “drawing rooms.” Acting as first lady, Eliza took over the responsibility. Instead of following the social Virginia-style wedding popularized by Dolley Madison, Eliza modeled Maria and Samuel’s wedding on the private New York style, inviting only a select few. Sarah Seaton, wife of journalist and future mayor of Washington, D.C., William Winston Seaton, said, “The New York style was adopted at Maria Monroe’s wedding.

Only the attendants, the relations, and a few old friends of the bride and groom witnessed the ceremony.”17 Thus Maria’s wedding became collateral damage in the etiquette war Eliza was fighting with society. John Quincy Adams, writing on the day of the wedding, explained the impetus for a private wedding: There has been some further question of etiquette upon this occasion. The foreign Ministers were uncertain whether it was expected they should pay their compliments on the marriage or not, and Poletica, the Russian Minister, made the enquiry of Mrs. Adams. She applied to Mrs. Hay,

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the President’s eldest daughter, who has lived in his house ever since he has been President, but never visits at the houses of any of the foreign Ministers, because their ladies did not pay her first calls.

Mrs. Hay thought her youngest sister could not receive and return visits which she herself could not reciprocate, and therefore that the foreign Ministers should take no notice of the marriage; which was accordingly communicated to them.18 Because the wedding was private, there are few accounts of the event. The newspapers carried only an announcement: “On Thursday the 9th inst. in Washington City, by the Rev. Mr. Hawley, Samuel Laurence Gouverneur, of New-York, to Miss Maria Hester Monroe, youngest daughter of James Monroe, President of the United States.”19 Some details can, however, be pieced together from memoirs and diaries. Although close friends and advisers to the Monroes, the Adamses were not invited to the wedding, but Louisa Catherine Adams gleaned information that she recorded in her diary. Of the wedding day, she wrote, “The day was uncommonly rainy and stormy & I remained at home all day—Saw no one and heard nothing.”20 The next day the Adamses dined at Colonel John Tayloe’s and heard whispers of the wedding and of those who felt slighted by not receiving an invitation:

be admitted on the occasion to the Ladies and they were all excessively shocked.21 Much later, Maria’s daughter-in-law Marian Campbell Gouverneur wrote a description of the wedding in her memoir: Only the relatives and personal friends attended; even the members of the Cabinet were not invited. The gallant General Thomas S. Jesup, one of the heroes of the War of 1812 and Subsistence Commissary General of the Army, acted as groomsman to Mr. Gouverneur.22

Portraits of the bride’s parents are displayed today in the Elliptical Saloon (today’s Blue Room) in which she was married. First Lady Elizabeth Monroe (below on far left) and President James Monroe (opposite) look down on the collection of recently regilded Bellangé furniture, which they acquired for the President’s House in 1818.

The wedding ceremony took place on the State Floor of the White House, most likely in the “Elliptical Saloon” (today’s Blue Room), because the larger East Room was unfinished. The Blue Room was where the president

WHTIE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION

We heard a great talk of the wedding and as usual many ill natured remarks. . . . I have heard nothing concerning the ceremony except that there were 7 bridesmaids and 7 Bridesmen and a very handsome supper at which 42 persons sat down—There are to be two Drawing Rooms on Monday and Tuesday next. . . . I mentioned that the Corps Diplomatique were not to

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below and opposite

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most often received official guests, and its elegance and grandeur were often remarked on. One visitor wrote: “We entered a Saloon which is elyptical— crimson papering, with rich gilt bordering. The windows are corniced with large, gilded, spread eagles. . . . This is a most splendid room.”23 Furnished to impress, this room would have been perfect for the important occasion of the president’s daughter’s wedding.

The ceremony was officiated by the Reverend William Hawley from St. John’s Episcopal Church, located just across President’s Park, and afterward the forty-two guests were invited to dine in the State Dining Room.24 There is no clear record of the wedding dress Maria wore, but one writer speculated it was the same dress of white satin that she had previously worn to the New Year’s Eve reception at the White House.25 At white house history quarterly

this time, and until the late nineteenth century, it was common for a bride to wear a gown of colored fabric that could be used at other social functions after the wedding. The young couple discouraged gifts, but they did receive silver flatware in the Old Maryland pattern and a pair of Sheffield plate candlesticks engraved with the Gouverneur crest from the president and first lady.26 The day after the wedding, the young newlyweds left for a three-day honeymoon trip, returning to a full schedule of festivities in Washington to celebrate their marriage. On Monday, March 13, and Tuesday, March 14, the White House hosted two official wedding “drawing rooms.”27 The president and first lady mingled with guests at both parties, while Maria received as hostess.28 The Adamses were among the guests, but the invitation list remained selective. Family tensions over the wedding were not yet forgotten. The groom, Samuel Gouverneur, harbored bitter sentiments toward his wife’s family for not allowing the wedding couple to plan their own wedding. He believed his wife should have been able to invite anyone she wanted to the ceremony. To compensate, Samuel and Maria planned a series of celebratory balls hosted by prominent members of Washington society. These they wanted to be as inclusive as possible, thus appeasing the diplomats and members of Washington society who were not invited to the wedding. The Gouverneurs would also gain freedom from the interfering sister, Eliza. On March 18, 1820, nine days after the wedding, the first ball took place at the home of Commodore Stephen Decatur and his wife Susan.

FESTIVITIES AT DECATUR HOUSE Situated so close to the White House, Stephen and Susan Decatur’s house was an ideal location and its owner the ideal host to be chosen for the first ball. A

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who wore an Empire-style dress in her 1804 portrait by Gilbert Stuart, also helped spread the fashion. The sheer, narrow dresses caused a sensation at the beginning of the nineteenth century because of their contrast to the elaborate hooped costumes of previous decades. Different types of clothing began to be held appropriate for different occasions and times of the day.

The stylish “walking dress” was worn for daytime promenades and socializing, whereas “full dress” meant evening attire suitable for a ball. The difference was the amount of skin shown. Evening necklines were lower, and the arms were often exposed.31

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Artist Riley Sheehey recently envisioned the grand Decatur House ball held for the newlyweds.

As Susan Decatur plays the harp, guests seated in a semicircle enjoy the music. As Stephen Decatur devotedly watches her play, his anxiety about the forthcoming duel is obvious.

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richly rewarded naval hero and celebrity for his heroic actions in the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812, Decatur was a much-loved and prominent member of society and a “special favorite of President Monroe and his Cabinet”29 Attending a ball at his house would have been a social highlight and a way for the Gouverneurs to return to society’s good graces.

Stephen Decatur’s brick three-story house, built with prize money awarded for the capture of the British frigate Macedonian during the War of 1812, had been designed by Latrobe with entertainment in mind. The second story was intended for just such a gala as a wedding party. There was a formal dining room on the left and a drawing room on the right, with a “company room” or guest bedroom to the rear. Doors to these rooms would have remained closed. When the doors were drawn open for entertainment, a steady flow of guests could parade throughout the rooms. According to a later inventory, the dining room lacked a large dinner table and chairs, which would have impeded the flow of guests around the rooms. Instead, it is likely that folding card tables pulled together and covered with cloth were used as dining tables. Since the house was newly built, the plaster walls were covered with wash and no wallpaper applied. The second-story windows, designed by Latrobe to be taller than the others, had shutters left open so passersby could admire the sight and sound of the festivities within.30 Guests arriving at the Decaturs would have been dressed in the height of fashion, and that meant French fashion. French Empire style (1804–15) was adopted in America through the proliferation of fashion publications and illustrations that portrayed high-waisted dresses with short puffed sleeves and long loose skirts that created a straight silhouette. Emulating admired members of society, such as Dolley Madison,

The women invited to Decatur House that evening would surely have been in “full dress,” but by the 1820s the Empire style began to be modified and their ball gowns would have been more embellished, the circumference of the hem gradually increased, and the waistline slightly lowered.32 Stephen Decatur wore full naval regalia, as did guests also from the navy and the army, while foreign diplomats and members of Monroe’s administration would have been wearing colorful high-cut coats with tails, perhaps in green or claret, to match the silhouette adopted by women.33 Decatur’s ball was meant to be the

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launch of a “week . . . destined to be the gayest of the season” with balls planned for every night of the week for the bride and groom.34 The glamour of the furnishings, company, and refreshments, and the gaiety of the dancing and music created an impressive evening memorable for all who attended. Few knew the threat of death hanging over Decatur.

Even his wife was blissfully unaware of the impending duel as she played the harp for the guests. Months later, practicing her harp would help Susan Decatur “as a resource from ennui these long Evenings and to soothe her deep sorrows.”35 One of the most detailed accounts of the ball was written by a

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the daughter of President Monroe, then a bride. The Misses Douglas, of New York, afterwards Mrs. Cruger and Mrs. James Monroe, were among the guests. . . . The next week there was to have been a similar party at Commodore Porter’s. In the course of the evening, Decatur said to Porter, his confidant, “I may spoil your party.”36

Today a portrait of Commodore Decatur hangs in the second floor parlor of his home overlooking Lafayette Square, where he hosted a grand ball to celebrate the wedding of the president’s daughter shortly before losing his life in a duel.

He died on the first floor of the house.

youthful Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, later an influential businessman and diplomat.

In his memoir he focused on Stephen Decatur: From my own observation, I am sure Commodore Decatur foresaw the hazard of his position. The day preceding the duel I met Commodore Decatur. He looked ill, and seemed abstracted. The Saturday before, I was at a party at his house. He seemed out of spirits, and I was particularly struck with the solemnity of his manner and his devotion to his wife and her music, as she played upon the harp, the company forming a semicircle in front of her, Decatur himself, in uniform, the centre of the semicircle, his eyes riveted upon his wife. The party was given to Mrs. Gouverneur,

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The shocking news of Com Decaturs being mortally wounded in a Duel with Com Baron—My blood Ran cold as I heard it and Mr: A—immediately went off to see him and offer every assistance in his power I followed and when I got there was informed that there were faint hopes of his life—The whole Town was in a state of agitation & a great part of the day his door was crowded with people waiting the sad event—He expired at eight oclock last evening to the grief of the whole Nation who will long mourn the loss of a favourite Hero whose amiable qualities as a private Citizen intitled him to the esteem of all whose esteem & friendship were worth possessing—His style of living has excited some envy in narrow minded people for such there are & such there ever will

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Decatur’s prediction rang true. Although one more small party did take place, hosted by the Adamses on Tuesday, the following evening, on Wednesday, March 22, Decatur died in his office from a wound sustained at the famous duel against Commodore James Barron in Bladensburg, Maryland.

Louisa Catherine Adams wrote that same day:

be Incapable of such exertions as will promote their own interests & envious of all who rise to eminence they gratify their spleen by the basest calumnies.37 The nation was devastated, and the bridal festivities forgotten.

Margaret Bayard Smith, prolific writer of Washington society, stated, “Commodore Decatur’s death, was a striking and melancholy event. . . . From the moment Decatur fell, nothing else was thought of.”38 Sarah Seaton added, “But the bridal festivities have received a check which will prevent any further attentions to the President’s family, in the murder of Decatur! The first ball, which we attended, consequent on the wedding was given by the Decaturs! Invitations were all out from Van Ness, Commodore Porter, etc., all of which were remanded on so fatal a catastrophe.”39 While Washington society was recovering from their shock of Decatur’s tragic death, they were at least momentarily distracted from the obsession with etiquette. The Gouverneurs’ plan had succeeded. Even though the bridal celebrations ended abruptly, the only ball held was a significant one. As the final ball to ever be hosted by Stephen Decatur, it made a lasting impression.

When President Monroe’s term ended in 1825, Maria and Samuel moved to Oak Hill, the Monroe family plantation in Virginia, along with the former president and first lady. When Samuel became a member of the New York State Assembly, the Gouverneurs moved to New York; he later served as postmaster of New York City, 1828–36.

While in New York Samuel invested in racehorses and the Bowery Theater along with James Alexander Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton’s son. Together, Maria and Samuel had four children— James Monroe, Elizabeth, Samuel L. Jr., and a daughter who died in infancy. Former President Monroe moved to New York to live with Maria when his

wife Elizabeth died in 1830, and on July 4, 1831, he died from heart failure and tuberculosis. The Oak Hill estate was willed to Maria but was sold to pay off her father’s debts. Maria passed away in 1850 at the age of 47. Many of the family possessions, including Maria’s wedding band, have been donated and remain in the collection of the James Monroe Museum and Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Maria’s son Samuel Jr. wrote just after his mother’s death, “A man through life has but one true friend and that friend generally leaves him early.

Man enters the lists of life but ere he has fought his way far that friend falls by his side; he never finds another so fond, so true, so faithful to the last—His Mother!”40 NOTES 1.

George Morgan, The Life of James Monroe (Boston: Small, Maynard and Company, 1921), 417.

2. Marie Smith and Louise Durbin, “Monroe Wedding Stormy,” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1966, 15.

3. Quoted in Gilson Willets, Inside History of the White House (New York: Christian Herald, 1908), 270.

4. William Seale, The President’s House, 2nd ed.

(Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 1:151, 155.

5. Esther Singleton, The Story of the White House (New York: McClure Company, 1907), 1:132.

6. Seale, President’s House, 1:143.

7. Allida Black, First Ladies of the United States of America, 14th ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2017), 15.

8. Doug Wead, “Maria Hester Monroe: An Event Marred by Murder,” in All the President’s Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America’s First Families (New York: Atria Books, 2004), 223.

16. Wead, “Maria Hester Monroe,” 223.

17. Singleton, Story of the White House, 148.

18. Quoted in ibid., 147. “Poletica” is Pyotr Ivanovich Poletika.

19. “Married,” New Hampshire Sentinel, March 25, 1820, genealogybank.com. Many newspapers carried the same announcement.

20. Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, diary, March 9, 1820, https://founders.archives.gov.

21. Ibid., March 10, 1820.

22. Marian Campbell Gouverneur, As I Remember: Recollections of American Society During the Nineteenth Century (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1911), 258.

23. Robert Donaldson, “Notes on a January Through the Most Interesting Parts of the United States and the Canadas,” January 16, 1819, quoted in Betty C Monkman, The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2014), 62.

24. Wead, “Maria Hester Monroe,” 221.

25. Smith and Durbin, “Monroe Wedding Stormy,” 15.

26. Ibid, 15.

27. Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, diary, March 10, 1820, http://founders.archives.gov.

28. Morgan, Life of James Monroe, 416.

29. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, In Memoriam: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, comp. Winslow M. Watson (Philadelphia: Sherman & Co., Printers, 1872), 160.

30. The inventory taken of Stephen Decatur’s house after his death lists “6 pine tables” used during the reception as make-do dining tables.

“Inventory of goods, chattels & Personal Estate of Stephen Decatore [sic], deceased, April 27, 1820,” Inventory & Sales, No. 1—J.H.B., H.C.N., Office of Register of Wills, July 1, 1818 to April 20, 1821, Probate Court Records of the District of Columbia, Record Group 21, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Description of architecture from Michael Fazio, “A Rational House with Complications,” in The Stephen Decatur House: A History (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2018), 196–97.

31. Mary Doering, “The Age of Revolution in Fashion, 1700–1824,” lecture, fall 2012, Smithsonian Associates, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 32. Ibid.

9. Singleton, Story of the White House, 135.

33. Marie Beale, Decatur House and Its Inhabitants (Washington, D.C.: National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1954), 3.

10. Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to Abigail Smith Adams, January 15, 1818, online at Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov.

34. Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 150.

11. Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, diary, January 2, 1818, https://founders.archives.gov.

35. Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, diary, December 3, 1820, https://founders.archives.gov.

12. Letter of December 25, 1819, quoted in William Winston Seaton, William Winston Seaton: A Biographical Sketch (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1871), 138–39.

36. Tayloe, In Memoriam, comp. Watson, 161.

13. Quoted in Singleton, Story of the White House, 133.

39. Quoted in Singleton, Story of the White House, 148.

14. Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, diary, December 14, 1818, https://founders.archives.gov.

37. Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, diary, March 22, 1820, http://founders.archives.gov.

38. Smith, First Forty Years, ed. Hunt, 150–51.

40. Quoted in Gouverneur, As I Remember, 257, 259.

15. Wead, “Maria Hester Monroe,” 223. Louisa Catherine Adams described Elizabeth Monroe Hay in her diary on January 7, 1818, http:// founders.archives.gov.

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NELLIE GRANT Marries in the East Room Rediscovered Relics of a White House Wedding

WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION / WHITE HOUSE C OLLEC TION

WILLIAM ADAIR

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On a whim, without knowing anything about the objects, I decided to bid and was lucky enough to walk away with the lot. It was only then that I was able to fully examine my new collection.

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View of the East Room as decorated for the wedding of Nellie Grant to Algernon Sartoris.

Portions of newly installed columns and architectural features seen around the room’s perimeter were later rediscovered by the author. below

The East Room as it appeared in 1869 prior to the Grant era redecoration. left

Nellie Grant and her husband, Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris, c. 1874.

L E F T : L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S / O P P O S I T E : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

i n t h e w i n t e r o f 1 8 7 4 , President and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant announced that their daughter, Nellie, would be married in May. The groom, Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris, was an Englishman whom Nellie had met not long before.

Her parents were not comfortable with the match.

Sartoris was a socialite and a bit of a gadfly at 23, while Nellie was an immature 18. Nevertheless the Grants planned for a splendid wedding, most notably redecorating the East Room where the ceremony would take place. Andrew Jackson’s three great chandeliers were replaced by even larger ones. Old ornamentation in stucco was adapted and embellished. Nothing was too resplendent for the Grants’ only daughter. Their decorations, often referred to as the “Steamboat Palace” style, remained the East Room until 1902, when the simpler style we see today replaced them.

What happened to some of Grant’s decorations is a long story. They seemed to have been lost, and are now found. Some twenty years ago I acquired a collection of interior architectural artifacts at a local auction house. Initially I was on the hunt for antique frames, but my eye was drawn to a small bit of gold leaf shimmering through a pile of wood in the corner of the room, amid other household furnishings.

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In front of me were four hollow-back, carved and painted, fluted wood pilasters, measuring 10 feet × 22 inches × 12 inches, stacked horizontally, one on top of the other in a haphazard fashion. Next to them scattered about the floor, like the Roman Forum, were four Corinthian capitols with carved acanthus leaves and two pairs of carved bases consisting of rosettes, a wave design, and a meander pattern, all interspersed with other neoclassical archetypes. Each fluted pilaster supported an intricately carved Corinthian capitol fashioned with a row of hand-carved acanthus leaves surmounted

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with scrolls. There was also a set of four freestanding turned and carved wood columns measuring 8 feet × 10¼ inches × 6½ inches. Upon closer examination of the pilasters, I discovered most of the surfaces were covered in degraded gray house paint and embedded with dirt. Nonetheless, I was not discouraged, as paint can sometimes be removed with minimal damage to the original surfaces and I sensed that the artifacts were of extraordinary quality. To paraphrase my mentor, Paul Levi, “These objects needed looking after.”

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Four turned and carved wooden columns purchased by the author at auction.

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Two of four hollowback wood pilasters, were purchased in pieces by the author and reassembled as later shortened and reconfigured.

The pilasters and columns were made to embellish the East Room during the Grant administration, in advance of the wedding of Nellie Grant.

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TOP: MAX HIRSHFELD / ALL OTHER IMAGES THIS SPREAD: BRUCE WHITE FOR THE WHITE HOUS E HISTORICAL AS SOCIATION

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The author, conservator William Adair, at work in his studio in Washington, D.C. Upon examining the Corinthian columns, he discovered Roman numerals behind the gilded eagles, indicating that each column was numbered according to its location. Some of the original yellow paint is visible. below

“Will Stanford, carpenter” penciled into the rear of one of the columns. It is rare to find a signature on an architectural piece.

The designer of the columns is still unknown. right

When Adair scraped away portions of later house paint, original gilding and shades of ivory were revealed.

Having first trained as an artist, frame-maker, and conservator of gilded artifacts, and ultimately as a frame historian, I developed an eye for obscure detail.1 I was no longer looking with a casual glance, but really observing, more like an archaeologist and a detective. W hen I worked at the Smithsonian Institution, a colleague once quipped to me, half joking, “A conservator must sometimes learn to see the invisible.” As I continued my examination, I noticed that each of the capitols was carved with Roman numerals at the base of the central acanthus leaf. (I have since learned that each of the capitols once had a gilded eagle at the center point).2 I also noticed a penciled inscription in flourishing freehand nineteenth-century script, “Will Stanford, Carpenter.” It is rare to have an artisan’s signature on a historic artifact such as this and also fortunate to have identified the unsung hero of the design team, the carpenter. On the verso of each of the pilasters and columns I found paper identification tags with what appeared to be museum accession numbers handwritten in red magic marker. There was also a fragment of early electrical or telephone wire still nailed to the surface of one of moldings.3 All these details, or clues, could serve as a road map through history, if we can interpret them.

On April 4, 2001, the curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Richard Murray, visited my studio in Dupont Circle and recognized the pilasters and columns as having come from the East Room of the White House. Apparently, he had actually discovered the White House provenance in 1970, when he was a Smithsonian Fellow researching Alice Pike Barney’s collection of art and furnishings in the Barney Studio House.

The history of the pilasters and columns is this.

In 1874 President Ulysses S. Grant’s directive to his supervising British-American architect, Alfred B. Mullett, was to “elaborate” on the original neoclassical designs of Irish architect, James Hoban, who in 1817 had reconstructed the White House

following the fire set by British troops in the War of 1812. To expand on classical simplicity, Mullett divided the East Room into thirds with a double cornice supported by sets of Corinthian columns, originally painted white and gold. They acted as pillars for an elaborate 1874 Greek Revival overmantel mirror in the East Room.4 It quickly became a complicated and ponderous style, like a three-layered gold and white cake with a silver ceiling. But the president’s wishes needed to be

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At that time, we decorated the Blue Room, the East Room, the Red Room, and the Hall between the Red and East Rooms, together with the glass screen contained therein.

The Blue Room, or Robin’s Egg Room—as it is sometimes called— was decorated in robin’s egg blue for the main color, with ornaments in a hand-pressed paper, touched out in ivory, gradually deepening as the ceiling was approached. In the East Room, we only did the ceiling, which was done in silver, with a design in various tones of ivory.12

Architect Alfred B. Mullett, c. 1880, was responsible for Grant’s newly redecorated East Room. His work was later criticized for “using overblown ornament to hide weak form.”

In 1886, the East Room was described in this way: The proportions of the East Room are agreeable, it being 80 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 22 feet high. The ceiling is divided by two heavy cross beams in such a manner as to make the center compartment a third smaller than those at either end. The ceiling itself is in imitation of rough stucco, painted, and then finished in silver aluminum, and finally in mosaic work of three shades of brown. In each part, there is a border of squares covered alternately with arabesques and mosaic. Each centerpiece is one large square with narrow side parallelograms and corner squares. . . . The Cross-beams are supported on either end by an Ionic pilaster and one pillar, with the bases the height of the dado, and floriated capitols. They are also in white and gold. The four large mantels also in white and gold. . . . The cornice consists of one large cove with two members on either side.

The molded frieze, two feet deep, together with the cornice and cove, are finished in white and gold, which predominates in the decorations.

The cross beams are treated as part of the cornice. Allowing the eye to pass downward to the dado of paneled wood, three feet and a half high, we find the same elaborate treatment of the two leading tints.13 Then, when Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, the White House interiors were redecorated once again. It was common practice for many incoming presidents and first ladies to keep up with changing fashions by replacing furnishings and renovating interiors. For this work

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carried out. Congress typically allocates funds for updating, and the enriching of the interiors of the White House was perfectly timed to create a backdrop for the upcoming wedding of Grant’s daughter, Nellie.

For this important high-visibility commission, Mullett may have collaborated with William J. McPherson, a Boston decorator, but there is little documentation of the project.5 Mullett may have also turned to the Austrian designer Richard Von Ezdorf to oversee fixtures and finishing details in the East Room.

Von Ezdorf had been raised in Venice and had studied engineering, architectural design, and history in Europe before immigrating to the United States in 1873. He joined the Treasury Department’s Office of the Supervising Architect, first working as a draftsman. He then advanced to design work on the State, War and Navy Building adjacent to the White House.6 Later critics accused Mullett of “using overblown ornament to hide weak form.”7 Others referred to his elaborate work at the New York City Hall Post Office as “Mullett’s Monstrosity.”8 The New York Sun called him “the most arrogant, pretentious, and preposterous little humbug in the United States,”9 and he soon “gained a reputation as a micromanaging authoritarian with an explosive temper.”10 In 1890, ill and in financial difficulty several years after the collapse of a floor in the City Hall Post Office that killed three people and led to an investigation for negligence, he committed suicide in Washington, D.C. History softened its view of him, and Von Ezdorf, too, is now recognized for his contribution to monumental Victorian architecture.

In 1881–82, President Chester A. Arthur redecorated the White House. He had not immediately moved into the mansion following the death of his predecessor James A. Garfield, as he wanted it refurbished first. Although many presidents rely on the assistance of their wives for such projects, Arthur was a widower and chose to enlist the services of Louis Comfort Tiffany to redecorate the State Rooms.11 Tiffany, one of the first professional decorators hired to work in the White House, recalled some of the work he had done in the White House:

below left

Small portions of the mirror pillars still retain their original gold and cream paint scheme, which was later covered over with blue and silver. below right

Washington Post, for his home at 1500 I Street NW. When McLean rebuilt this home in 1907, the East Room elements were removed and may have found their way to the palatial Massachusetts Avenue residence of Thomas F. Walsh, who liked to collect interesting bits of furniture. Walsh’s daughter Evalyn was married to McLean’s son Edward.

Walsh’s neighbor on Sheridan Circle, Alice Pike Barney, may have acquired the elements from McLean or Walsh, if not directly from the auction. In any case, it was from Barney collection of art and furnishings that the National Collection of Fine Arts acquired the East Room elements in December 1961. They were deaccessioned in May 1999.17

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The Alice Pike Barney Studio House in Washington, D.C., is seen here in 1933. After Barney’s death in 1931, her daughters held the house until 1961, when they donated it to the Smithsonian.

In 1976 the house opened as part of the National Museum of American Art. The Smithsonian eventually closed the museum and sold the building.

Today it is the Embassy of Latvia.

Roosevelt commissioned the prestigious New York firm of McKim, Mead & White. The East Room was completely dismantled, thus removing all the work put in by Mullett in 1874 and the subsequent work

by Tiffany in 1882.14 All was disposed of at auction, including fragments sold as the “East Room Adornments” that consisted of numerous mirrors, mantels, pilasters, and souvenirs.15 (Until 1961, surplus White House furnishings and architectural fragments were repeatedly salvaged, discarded, or sold off at auction.)16 The property from the Roosevelt renovation was auctioned at the salesroom of C. G. Sloan at 1407 G Street NW, on January 21, 1903. Some lots were purchased by John R. McLean, owner and publisher the Cincinnati Enquirer and the

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Details of the pillars reveal the original Arabic script visible through the later overpaint.

The original columns had later been overpainted with bronzing powder and then painted with a wash of oxidizing greenish glaze of various colors of bronze and silver paint. All four columns have Arabic script visible under this thin bronze glaze.

The script was possibly made by Tiffany’s team as part of his redecorating scheme for the room, but there is no direct evidence to back up this claim, yet.

There are some unusual treatments on the pilasters, capitols, and columns still to be examined as well as the original decorative and painting schemes. More work and analysis need to be undertaken with paint specialists to document the various colors, gilding, and glaze layers on all the surfaces. The “shades of ivory” that Tiffany referred to are actually peeping through the surface of the pilasters, under the protection of the thick gray house paint, waiting to see the light of day, as is the gold leaf from 1874.

It is rare to have the opportunity to study objects like these. What we can learn from them is critical to our understanding of the period. All these various layers of paint and glazes are not only tools for the interpretive history of this room but of American decorative arts history as well. Nellie Grant’s wedding columns illustrate where art, history, and a little bit of luck come together to tell a story.

December 27, 2005, quoting “East Room Adornments,” Washington Post, January 22, 1903.

16. Leslie B. Jones, “Celebrating the White House: Treasures of the First Families,” in Celebrating the White House: Washington Winter Show, January 6–8, 2012 (Washington, D.C: Washington Winter Show, 2012), 37. On September 22, 1961, these practices were ended by law. Public Law 87-286, 75 Stat. 586, section 2, reads in pertinent part: “Articles of furniture, fixtures and decorative objects of the White House, when declared by the president to be of historic or artistic interest . . . shall . . . be considered to be inalienable and the property of the White House. Any such article, fixture or object, when not in use or on display in the White House shall be transferred by the direction of the President as a loan to the Smithsonian Institution for its care, study and storage, or exhibition . . . and returned to the White House . . . on notice by the President.”

17. Allman to Gold Leaf Studios, December 27, 2005. The Barney Studio House on Sheridan Circle is now the Latvian Embassy, and the Walsh-McLean House on Massachusetts Avenue NW is now the Indonesian Embassy. See also “Walsh-McLean House (Indonesian Embassy),” D.C. Historic Sites, https:// historicsites.dcpreservation.org; Kira M. Sobers, “The Alice Pike Barney Studio House,” posted December 4, 2014, Smithsonian Institution Archives, https://siarchives.si.edu. For the deaccessioning, see acc. no. 1968.159A–L, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. See also Alice Pike Barney Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

NOTES 1.

William Bruce Adair, The Frame in America, 1700–1900: A Survey of Fabrication Techniques and Styles (Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Architects, 1983).

2. Information from William G. Allman, former curator, The White House. To date three of the four eagles have been located, two in private collections and one in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.

3. The wire may date from 1891, when electricity was installed in the White House. William Seale, The President’s House: A History, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 1:570–71.

4. For a description of the redecoration, see Seale, President’s House, 1:454–55.

5. Allman to Tom Michie, May 18, 2000.

6. “Richard Ezdorf (1848–1926),” The Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Life in the White House, online at https:// georgewbush-whitehouse-archives.gov.

7. “Alfred B. Mullett,” Wikipedia.

8. Quoted in Jason Carpenter, “Historic Post Offices: Architectural Masterpieces That Are More Than Just Places to Drop Mail,” posted October 22, 2014, 6sqft, 6sqft.com.

9. Quoted in Cecil D. Elliott, The American Architect from the Colonial Era to the Present (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003), 78.

10. “Alfred B. Mullett,” Wikipedia.

11. For this redecoration, see Seale, President’s House, 1:518–23.

12. Quoted in Tessa Paul, The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany (London: New Burlington Books, 2004).

13. Hester M. Poole, “At the White House,” Decorator and Furnisher 7, no. 6 (March 1886): 170.

14. For the Roosevelt renovation, see Seale, President’s House, 1:640–45.

15. William G. Allman to Virginia Burden, Gold Leaf Studios,

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ALICE ROOSEVELT weds Nicholas Longworth A First Daughter’s Wedding in the East Room

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S E LWA “ LU C K Y ” R O O S E V E LT

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emotion. A wedding breakfast followed the marriage with abundant food created by guest chefs and favors provided for the ladies.

With the details overseen by the bride’s stepmother, Edith Roosevelt, who had an acute sense of propriety, the wedding was one of the most memorable events in White House history. Following the ceremony, Alice demonstrated her appreciation for her stepmother with a kiss.

The painting, published here for the first time, is one of several made by William Baxter Closson to record events at the Theodore Roosevelt White House. They have since enjoyed proud positions in Roosevelt parlors scattered throughout the family.

My late husband Archibald Roosevelt Jr. fell heir to this oil on board painting through his father.

Now more than one hundred years old, it commemorates his grandparents, Theodore and Edith Roosevelt, and the bride and groom, Alice and Nick, intimately.

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Alice Roosevelt on her wedding day. opposite

A march down the Grand Staircase was a typical Roosevelt entrance for formal events, as depicted in this work by William Baxter Closson. below

The East Room is seen decorated with flowers ahead of the ceremony.

Ropes separated the wedding party from the guests.

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one of the great events of President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration was the marriage of his daughter Alice on February 17, 1906. The groom, Congressman Nicholas Longworth, was an old friend of hers, and even though the parents were not completely happy (TR thought him vulgar), it was an elegant affair. This painting captures the scene and leaves some questions. The march down the Grand Staircase is the primary question. Yes, the stair was a typical Roosevelt entrance, but Alice always said that the wedding party descended in the elevator across the house. The bride marched into the East Room on her father’s arm, and the ceremony took place on a platform in front of the triple windows, banked in palms and flowers.

The event was commemorated by a photograph, but not like one would imagine. Instead of the East Room, or Red or Blue or Green Room, the setup for the picture was a table covered with oriental carpets in the State Dining Room, where bride and groom and presidential father lined up without

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President Theodore Roosevelt posed for a somber wedding day portrait (left) with his daughter Alice and her new husband Nicholas Longworth.

Fifty years later, Alice Roosevelt Longworth posed for another photograph in the White House, this time with newlyweds Luci and Patrick Nugent (opposite top). The following year she returned as a guest at the wedding of Lynda and Charles Robb (opposite bottom left), and in 1971, she waved to the press as she and her granddaughter Joanna Sturm were escorted to their seats in the Rose Garden for the wedding of Tricia Nixon (opposite bottom right).

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A White House Wedding REMEMBERED

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lynda jo h n s o n r o b b a n d c h u c k r o b b wi t h s t ewart m c laur i n

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On December 9, 1967, Lynda Bird Johnson, eldest daughter of President Lyndon Johnson and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, married Marine Captain Chuck Robb in a military ceremony in the East Room of the White House.

In December of 2018, Mrs. Robb was interviewed by Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, about the event and her memories of living in the White House.

In January 2019, Stewart McLaurin conducted a separate interview with Chuck Robb, Marine officer and social aide at the White House when he met and married Lynda Johnson, and later governor and senator from Virginia.

For the enjoyment of readers of White House History Quarterly, we have merged selected highlights of the interviews, retaining the question-and-answer format. Like any couple married for more than fifty years, they cherish memories of their wedding but tell different stories about how they met and courted.

dignitaries and guests of the White House during official functions. And is that how you got to know each other, with him in that role?

LYNDA ROBB: Absolutely. Military officers can volunteer for extra duty as a social aide. When we got married, there were aides representing each of the services—the Marines, Air Force, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard.

Lynda Bird Johnson enjoys a dance with her fiancé, Marine Captain Charles Robb, at the Marine Corps Ball in November 1967. The couple met while Captain Robb served as a social aide at the White House and more than fifty years later, Mrs. Robb recalled that the ability to dance was an important qualification for social aides at the time.

And were you part of that selection process . . . ?

Your husband, Charles Robb, was a Marine captain and social aide in the White House. Starting back in the Theodore Roosevelt administration military officers have been assigned as social aides to help with visiting

LYNDA ROBB: Not at all! But the Social Aides were a group I saw fairly frequently.

Many became my friends and I also dated several so I would laugh and say that

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STEWART MCLAURIN to LYNDA ROBB: The first White House wedding occurred back in 1812, when Dolley Madison’s sister, Lucy Payne Washington, married Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd. The first child of a president to marry in the White House was Maria Hester Monroe in 1820. It was the social event of the year in Washington. One president of the United States married in the White House: Grover Cleveland to Frances Folsom in 1886. And then there’s the very special occasion that we’re talking about today with Lynda Johnson Robb.

previous spread Newlyweds Chuck and Lynda Robb prepare to cut their wedding cake in the East Room as the bride’s parents, President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, look on.

I want to go and pick out people! Most importantly, they needed to be able to dance, because Daddy loved dancing.

He knew how important it was for every woman who was a guest at the White House to be able to go home and say, “I danced last night with the president.”

He told the social aides that after he had danced a little while with one of his guests, to please come and tap him on the shoulder and cut in, so he could dance with another woman. You know, in the olden days, that was something that you could do. That way, it wouldn’t be embarrassing for him to dance only two or three minutes with one guest.

Is that how you met Captain Robb, he cut in on a dance with you?

LYNDA ROBB: No, the way we met is that his roommate, who was also a social aide, was dating my roommate, who was living with us at the time. I loved to play bridge, and after a State Dinner, I would ask if anyone wanted to go upstairs and play bridge. Chuck started joining in the upstairs bridge games. We met with the press not knowing anything about it. And when we announced that we were getting married, the reporters were surprised: why didn’t you tell us, we thought you were dating? And I was dating other people until we decided to get married. But it was a very unusual way to meet.

STEWART MCLAURIN to CHUCK ROBB: Tell us about your memories of first meeting the eldest daughter of the president.

CHUCK ROBB: We have different stories on that particular matter! She thinks that we met at her house, which was the White House. I think we first met at my house, which was the bachelor officers quarters called Center House at Marine Barracks, where the commandant of the Marine Corps and a number of threestar generals lived, and where the Marine Corps Band and the Marine Corps Drum white house history quarterly

and Bugle Corps are also stationed. I was the adjutant at Marine Barracks, an assignment that at the time included protocol duties.

And what did your fellow military social aides think of your dating the daughter of the president?

CHUCK ROBB: I don’t know that I ever got a take on that, but the best man in our wedding was also a Marine.

Tell us about your perspective on being a young military social aide in the White House, and what some of your duties were.

CHUCK ROBB: I didn’t apply to become one. I was asked to be the senior aide to the commanding general of the Second Marine Division and was told I would be preselected by the Marine Corps to be a military aide and would have an interview before a final determination was made. I got so used to going over to the White House during that period. We were sort of like the furniture. I was part of the working furniture at the White House. At State Dinners in the White House I’d usually be assigned to stand next to the president and introduce the guests as they came down the receiving line. I would give the president the title and name of the person. After a State Dinner, when the social aides had completed our duties, Lynda would frequently invite me and sometimes other aides to come up to the Solarium to play bridge. That is how it got started. We weren’t really dating at that point, but Lynda did on several occasions invite me to be her escort at events in Washington.

I was a little slow on the take up.

STEWART MCLAURIN to LYNDA ROBB: There was another wedding in the Johnson family, which took place in August 1966 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. And that

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LYNDA ROBB: It is true. Those of us who married in the White House differentiate ourselves from those who just had a reception there, or a private event.

STEWART MCLAURIN to CHUCK ROBB: Do you have memories of Luci’s wedding?

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CHUCK ROBB: I do. That was the first time Lynda and I were photographed together, although it was not an official photograph. I was a military social aide at Luci’s wedding. I greeted guests at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and helped them to their seats. Then afterward Luci had a reception at the White House. When it was time for the official wedding photograph, I helped the ring bearer and the flower girl get into the front row. All the other members of the wedding party were on the staircase. That picture of me putting them in position was not an official photograph, but it was the first time that anybody had caught Lynda and me in the same lens.

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We were very private. With the exception of my being an official escort at some events at Lynda’s request, we had not otherwise gone out anywhere but to friends’ houses, usually friends who were in Lynda’s father’s administration. Once I was stowed aboard Air Force One and the press didn’t know it until we went to a little church in Fredericksburg, Texas, one of the closest to the LBJ Ranch, and the reporters saw the president and the first lady and Lynda and me all come out of the church together and they took a lot of pictures. That’s the first time I think that the press corps realized that there was something serious going on. The fact that we had been seeing each other became known, because someone with a

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was the wedding of your sister, Luci Baines Johnson. She had her reception at the White House but she didn’t get married at the White House. I’ve read that you actually caught the bouquet, which she threw from the famous Truman Balcony. And sixteen months later, you were married to Captain Robb. Is that true?

telephoto lens caught a picture of Lynda and me at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with other White House social aides, where we liked to go during the summer.

That was the first time that we were photographed as a couple.

CHUCK ROBB: Well, first of all Lynda and I privately decided to get married.

It was a decision that we reached after having had dinner at the home of the then curator of the White House, Jim Ketchum. We had been seen together, as “a couple.” I had no ring at that point, and I had not intended to get engaged that night as a matter of fact. But we had both spent enough time together, and we were up in the Solarium, which has a great view of Washington, particularly at night when the full moon is out. And we talked for several hours and decided to get married. She was so excited she wanted to go

tell her father and mother, but her parents were asleep. When she was a little girl and she had something special that wanted to say she’d go into her parents’ bedroom and pull on her mother’s hand in bed and get her mother to come out and talk to her. This night she startled her mother, who said something. And her father heard, and Lynda said something to the effect that she wanted to talk to her mother, and her father said, don’t you want to talk to me? And it was kind of cute, Lynda wrote the whole thing down at the time. The next day I sent Lynda a dozen long stem red roses. When they were delivered to the White House they were inadvertently given to her mother and Lynda saw them and said, “those are mine!” Fortunately I think both of us felt very good about the decision that we had made jointly to get married. In any event, about a week later I called one of the president’s secretaries and asked for a personal appointment. I was escorted into the Queens’ Sitting Room in the White House, and the president came in almost immediately thereafter

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As a Marine officer and as a protocol officer, how does one ask the commander in chief for the daughter’s hand in marriage?

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During his interview with Stewart McLaurin, Senator Robb recalled that the first time he was captured in a photograph with his future wife was during the wedding of her sister, Luci Johnson. While performing his duties as a social aide he helped the ring bearer and flower girl into position for an official wedding photograph (opposite). Although the couple attempted to keep their relationship secret, the press corps began to suspect the romance when Captain Robb was photographed with the Johnson family following a church service in Fredericksburg, Texas. The two were captured in photographs again when Lynda served as a bridesmaid for a former classmate in September 1967 (below).

the Marine Corps asks for the hand of the daughter of the president of the United States.

LYNDA ROBB: Well, I can’t speak for anybody else, but the way we did it is that I told my parents that I— Oh, you gave them a briefing in advance?

LYNDA ROBB: Absolutely, after Chuck had asked me.

STEWART MCLAURIN to LYNDA ROBB: Now tell us how a captain in

That’s great. Tell us about how you decided on the East Room. Did you have that in mind all along, or did you

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The engagement of Lynda Johnson and Marine Captain Charles Robb was announced with a press conference on the White House lawn in September 1967.

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS THIS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGES

and he said, first thing, “Welcome.” And we didn’t really know each other in the way that we got to know each other later on. He knew only that I was the person standing next to him in receiving lines, although I’m sure he knew about my record in the Marine Corps or I might not have gotten that assignment to begin with. And I said, “Mr. President, I suspect you know why I’m here.” And he in a very appealing way said, “yes, I believe I do.”

And then I went through the formal asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage, and he said, “yes, you have it and my love.”

Captain Robb is seen picking up a marriage license on December 6, 1967, three days before his wedding to Lynda Johnson.

think about the Rose Garden as a place to get married?

LYNDA ROBB: I never thought about it at all. It was just—it seemed the most natural place to have it.

LYNDA ROBB: I had read about lots of the traditions of the White House. The last big wedding, was Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s in 1906. She told me unbelievable stories about what she received, including a tiger rug.

The biggest space in the White House.

What everyone needs!

LYNDA ROBB: But I had no idea. Bess Able, who was the social secretary—in our time, she was the wonderful impresario—She planned things and she told me this is the way we should do this or that. She loved it.

LYNDA ROBB: We told everybody that this is not a state wedding, and state governments are not supposed to be sending presents. But some did send presents. And to me it’s just a magical thing, I didn’t have anything to do with the decorations, I didn’t—

Your wedding marked the first time a president’s daughter had been married in the White House since 1914, more than fifty-three years earlier, when President Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Eleanor was married. Did you study other White House weddings to plan your own?

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You didn’t express any preferences?

LYNDA ROBB: Well, red has always been my color. And I was getting married near Christmas, so in some ways it was very handy, because the same decorations could be used, and that was great.

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My mother was always trying to find ways to save money. There were things that the White House had, obviously we didn’t have to rent a big room.

Well, it’s very limited space, even though it’s the largest room in the White House. How did you decide who to invite?

LYNDA ROBB: Very difficult, and as a matter of fact we had a book. And we had people under categories. Daddy and Mother had a category of people they wanted invited. And the Robbs (Chuck’s parents) had a category of their friends that they would like, and then Chuck had his, and I had mine. And our lists were the smallest. Things have changed.

It used to be that the parents gave the wedding and the rehearsal dinner. And some of the people were dear friends of mine, the senators, because I had grown up with them. I was born when Daddy was in Congress, so a lot of these people were my friends, too.

What about other presidential family members from other first families?

LYNDA ROBB: Alice Roosevelt Longworth came, and everybody wanted to take her picture.

You put on your wedding gown upstairs and the president of the United States walked down the Grand Staircase with you. As you prepared to go into the East Room, what were you seeing—what were you feeling?

LYNDA ROBB: Well, I took a lot of deep breaths first. And I had practiced walking up and down the steps in that long gown because I didn’t want to trip, and I didn’t want to be looking at my feet all the time.

The door closed behind me and I couldn’t get back in . . .

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It’s the point of no return.

LYNDA ROBB: I have to tell you, it was traumatic for my father. He was really sad, and the night before, at the rehearsal dinner, Daddy just looked like he lost his best friend. Sad about giving up his firstborn. And we have wonderful pictures of Mother, and she’s kissing him on the cheek and telling him, “it’s going to be all right.”

That’s a wonderful story.

LYNDA ROBB: Daddy’s darling daughter. That night, my father made a toast to me. And he had lots of pieces of paper and said, “I’m going to read to you some of the Secret Service reports about the courtship of— Oh no!

LYNDA ROBB: Lynda Johnson and Charles Robb.” And then he said, “November 18th, Chuck Robb enters White House at 6:30. Leaves at 12:30 that night.” And he had all these pieces of paper. And then he said, “I’m going to tear up these papers and make them into wedding confetti,” and of course we all laughed. And then Daddy told about the first time he saw me after I was born.

Oh, wow.

LYNDA ROBB: And by this time I was sobbing, and we were all sobbing, he was saying, you were just a little baby in a warm blanket and you meant so much to us. Because my mother had many miscarriages, my parents were married almost ten years before I was born, and so I was special in that sort of way. It was a very sentimental night before the wedding for daddy especially.

It’s so poignant to hear these tender moments with your father, the very strong Lyndon B. Johnson, president of the United States. But you haven’t white house history quarterly

President Lyndon Johnson walks his daughter down the Grand Staircase from the private quarters to the State Floor of the White House. During her interview with Stewart McLaurin, Mrs. Robb recalled that it was hard for her father to give his eldest daughter away.

Mother was calm and kept everybody calm. Loving, but no flibbertigibbet from my mother, ever that I saw her. My father gave her many, many, reasons to be upset or nervous or anxious or whatever. All of their married life he would call her and say, “I’m bringing six people home for dinner,” or whatever, at the last minute. But Mother was very happy about the marriage.

Tell us about the wedding gifts you gave to both sets of parents.

LYNDA ROBB: It was made from a pin that I gave to my bridesmaids, a little gold Marine bulldog mounted on a piece of wood along with a bird with a heart and an arrow through it. It had two symbols—the Marine Corps and Lynda Bird—under glass. It sat on my mother’s dresser for many, many years.

And where is it today?

LYNDA ROBB: On my mother’s dresser, on loan to the Park Service. You can go on a tour and see it.

STEWART MCLAURIN: And what other memories do you have of that special day?

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said much about your mom in this story, the first lady of the United States.

How was she on the day of the wedding, with her daughter getting married?

LYNDA ROBB: Mother was calm always.

I never saw her flustered, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. I tried to emulate her, and of course I couldn’t, because I had at least 50 percent of Lyndon Johnson, and he never sat still. But white house history quarterly

CHUCK ROBB: I remember that I was very, very happy when I got in my little green Austin Healey to drive to the White House. I had asked some of my fellow Marines stationed with me at Eighth and I Street to be ushers and provide the saber arch. And my best man was the Marine who also served as a social aide with me. Then Lynda and I had a very short honeymoon. We have never told anybody where we spent our first night.

LYNDA ROBB: Daddy was sad a little bit about losing his daughter, although I wasn’t very lost, because when Chuck left for Vietnam, I moved right back in the White House.

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determined to go. And then once Chuck went, there were questions, because he would be very vulnerable if he was captured. It was a time full of tension.

Your wedding was a bright spot for our country during a very challenging and difficult time. What are some of your strongest memories about that period in our nation’s history and with your father as president of the United States?

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Governor Robb recalled that one of his most special memories of the wedding was crossing under the saber arch provided by his fellow Marines with his new wife (opposite) as they exited the East Room after the ceremony. The couple proceeded to walk through the Entrance Hall as their guests looked on (above).

LYNDA ROBB: We got engaged in September and got married sooner than I would have liked because he was going to be going to Vietnam. And so we wanted to be married a little while before he left.

It was just three months. And this was a very tough time. The war in Vietnam was raging, and I knew that something could happen to Chuck. And so a lot of people were thinking that maybe Daddy would change his orders, but Chuck was

LYNDA ROBB: I could hear the protests outside. It was horrible to hear people protesting but that’s one of the wonderful things about our country: you might not like what’s going on, and you have the right to assemble. And they would be out doing their constitutional duty, in their eyes, to protest. But it was hard hearing them protest while my husband was over in Vietnam. I was expecting his baby, and I was scared about what was happening to him. Because I was living with my father in the White House I think I came to represent to him all those many other women and men and and mothers and fathers and so forth, who were concerned about their loved ones far away. Chuck made sure that they sent him to a very dangerous place, because he wanted to be really in the action. You know, Mary Todd Lincoln forbade the president from letting their oldest son go, and the son very much wanted to go and serve in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln just said to him, listen, it will drive your mother crazy if she has to carry that burden. Robert Lincoln did eventually get put on Grant’s staff for a very short time. Franklin Roosevelt faced the same horrible dilemma. He is supposed to have said, “The American public will not be happy until one of my sons is laid out in the East Room.” It’s hard to believe he said that, it must have been a private thing, because through that war that he took us through, he always seemed to have an upbeat spirit. But it weighs on a president to

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CHUCK ROBB: We had a relatively short period of time to plan for the wedding because Lynda knew from the beginning that I wanted very much to go to Vietnam. I had been putting that on my fitness reports, requesting that my next duty station be Vietnam. She knew that, she knew that I was going to go and said she wanted to have the wedding before I went.

Anyway, it was an unbelievable time, and 1968 was the year from hell for us.

There wasn’t a thing in the Bible about calamities that didn’t happen to us. Two good things happened. One was our daughter Lucinda’s birth in October, and the second was in December when Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon and return to Earth. I remember the Christmas Eve television broadcast in which the astronauts read in turn the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis. Otherwise it was a very, very difficult time for me, for Chuck, for Daddy.

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So the White House was the home to Lucinda Desha Robb, when she arrived the next October.

LYNDA ROBB: Yes, that was her first home for almost three months.

CHUCK ROBB: Lynda said she wanted to have a project while I was gone. Of course the main project was being pregnant and giving birth without having a husband to help. But she would write me every day and send me all kinds of things, including tapes. Her father had given each of us portable tape recorders, and I took mine to Vietnam and Lynda had hers, so she could listen to the tapes I sent.

STEWART MCLAURIN to CHUCK ROBB: You went on to have an

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have a child serve in combat. If you study American history, you will find that not very many presidential children served in a war.

After Captain Robb left for duty in Vietnam in February 1968, Lynda Robb returned to the White House to live. Daughter Lucinda Desha Robb, born in October 1968, spent her first Christmas in the White House (opposite).

CHUCK ROBB: For our fiftieth, we invited the original wedding party and many of the guests that we knew were still alive. We converted the house that we live in into what was the functional equivalent of a hotel ballroom and did a black tie dinner, got an orchestra to come play for the dancing, and had a great time. And of course we had our children and grandchildren on display. It was a very great occasion for us, memorable in every respect. Lynda has the distinction of being the only presidential daughter married in the White House who has had the privilege of celebrating a golden wedding anniversary.

LYNDA ROBB: For many years, when he was in the Senate, Chuck would ask if we could come over to the White House on December 9 around 4:00 p.m., so we could stand in the East Room on our anniversary. The most important people to get to know at the White House are the ushers—not the presidents and first ladies, because they leave. So I always tried to stay good friends with the ushers.

One time, I think it was our twentieth wedding anniversary, or maybe it was our twenty-fifth, the usher said we could come over, and the White House staff gave us champagne to toast.

CHUCK ROBB: Yes, we toasted our marriage and stood in the East Room and remembered our wedding.

NOTE Stewart McLaurin’s full interviews with Lynda Johnson Robb and Governor Chuck Robb are available as podcasts on the White House Historical Association website, www.whitehousehistory. org/1600-sessions.

C O U R T E S Y O F T H E R O B B FA M I L Y

Chuck and Lydna Robb’s family (below in 2017) has grown to include three daughters, Lucinda Desha Robb, Catherine Lewis Robb, and Jennifer Wickliffe Robb, two sons-in-law, Joshua Glazer and Lars Florio, and five grandchildren.

extraordinarily distinguished career in public service in our country, for which we’re very grateful. Both you and Lynda have been wonderful friends of the Association and great leaders in our country and we appreciate all that you have given and done for us and so we congratulate you on your fiftieth wedding anniversary.

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OPPOSITE: WHITE HOUS E HISTOR ICAL ASSOCIATION ABOVE: RICHARD M. NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

WHAT Flavor Is The Cake?

White House Weddings and the Public’s Curiosity b et h anee b em i s

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ritual that testifies to their having witnessed the marriage and accepted its validity.3 Those who are not witnesses or guests can still “consume” the cake visually, by enjoying media descriptions and images.

While for early White House weddings one had to be there to enjoy the cake, later weddings were covered by the press, with descriptions and then photographs of the wedding cake. In some instances slices of the cake were saved in public institutions.

The first several White House weddings were considered very private affairs, in the custom of the day. What is known of their wedding cakes comes from the diaries and letters of guests. For example, it seems there was not enough cake at a reception held for Maria Monroe Gouverneur and Samuel Gouverneur on March 13, 1820, four days after their White House wedding, for future first lady and reception guest Louisa Catherine Adams reported in her diary: “I didn’t get a bit of cake and Mary had none to dream on.”4 The Mary in question was Louisa’s niece, Mary Catherine Hellen, who, despite not having a piece of wedding cake to place under her pillow, would be the next White House bride. Eight years later, on February 25, 1829, Mary Catherine wed John Adams II, Louisa’s son. This time there was enough cake on hand for guests to take home and even enough for Louisa to send a piece to her son Charles Francis, who had not been able to attend. Receiving cake via post enabled him to enjoy his brother’s marriage, albeit after the fact.5

previous spread

Tricia Nixon and Edward Cox share the first bite of their wedding cake, which was embellished with doves and their initials, as seen in the detail. below

Guests at the 1967 wedding of Lynda Johnson gather to view the cake.

LBJ PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

a s l o n g a s t h e r e h av e b e e n w e d d i n g ca k es, there have been people saving pieces of it for one reason or another. As early as the seventeenth century, single women took home a piece of the nuptial cake to slip under their pillow, believing they would dream of their future husbands. In the early to mid-twentieth century couples began saving wedding cake to be served at the christening of their first child. Today many couples freeze the top tier of their wedding cake to be enjoyed on their first anniversary. Few cakes, however, achieve the longevity of presidential family wedding cakes, slices of which reside in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History many years after the nuptials they celebrated.1 White House weddings have long fascinated the public. Because they take place the people’s house, Americans feel a sense of national participation, of being guests by proxy. The bride and groom seem to belong to all of us, particularly if they are members of the president’s family; indeed, the Washington Post explicitly hailed Jessie Wilson as “The Nation’s Daughter-Bride” upon her White House wedding in 1913.2 Those who feel a kinship with a bride and groom naturally want to participate in their wedding celebration even if they cannot be physically present at the ceremony, and they satisfy this desire in other ways.

One of the “sweetest” ways guests participate in a wedding reception is by eating the bridal cake, a

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WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION

A crowd of curious onlookers waits outside of the White House on June 2, 1886, hoping for a glimpse of President Grover Cleveland and his new bride, Frances Folsom Cleveland.

The next few White House weddings received slightly more attention—a few lines in local papers, essentially just announcements, because press coverage of weddings before the 1850s was considered vulgar, only for actors and other “low” people. Private documents are still the only source of information on the wedding cake. For example, the White House doorkeeper Thomas Pendel recorded in his diary that at the 1874 wedding of Nellie Grant to Algernon Sartoris, the wedding cake was “put up in little white boxes about six inches long and three

inches wide” for guests to take home and “dream on, that those who were single might dream of their future husbands.”6 First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes explicitly forbade the publishing of bridal details concerning the wedding of her niece Emily Platt in 1878, fearing that “such publicity ha[d] an injurious effect, in many instances, on the parties concerned,” though it was later reported that the cake was white with the bride and groom’s initials stenciled in blue.7

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ANNOUNCEMENT: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY ALL OTHERS : WHITE HOUSE HISTORICA L ASS OCIATION

Detailed reporting of White House weddings began in 1886 with the wedding of Grover Cleveland and Frances Folsom, the first wedding of a president held in the mansion. There was no keeping this wedding secret. The groom was president; the bride was young and beautiful, and half his age. The public was captivated. “The interest taken by all classes of people in to-night’s White House wedding,” proclaimed the Washington Post, “is a genuine one participated in by all classes of people.”8 Hundreds turned up in person, uninvited, to stand on the White House lawn during the ceremony, in what was called “a jolly, good-natured gathering and thoroughly democratic.”9 Newspapers across the country scrambled to report the details of the wedding, which had been officially announced only a few days before the event. Prominent among those details were entire paragraphs dedicated to the wedding cake, the first White House wedding cake to be so visually “consumed” by all interested parties. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the cake to be “a wonder of snowy whiteness . . . there was not a break in the expanse of whiteness which overspread the cake. The initials ‘C. F.,’ raised from the surface, seemed to grow naturally out of it; the waxen wreath of orange blossoms which was deftly fastened round the top looked as though it had grown there.”10 The “little satin boxes which contained slices of the cake material” that were given away as souvenirs of the occasion were, according to Harper’s Bazaar, “highly prized by the one hundred and fifty persons who [were] so fortunate to possess them.”11 In fact, some of those so fortunate were sufficiently gratified as to save their boxes, cake and all. Several boxes survive today, including one in the National Museum of American History and one at the Grover Cleveland Birthplace State Historic Site in Caldwell, New Jersey, which has a piece of cake inside.12 From the Clevelands’ marriage on, no White House wedding could go without at least a mention of the cake in the news. Once the American people got a “taste” of “consuming” the White House wedding from the outside, they remained interested in knowing the details when the occasion arose. If the White House weddings belonged to the people of the United States, then the cakes did as well.

1886 Frances Folsom and Grover Cleveland

As this June 12, 1886, two-page spread in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper confirms, the Cleveland wedding was very big news. A century later White House Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier created a 5 foot tall replica of the wedding cake. Slices of the original were given to guests in boxes, one of which remains preserved in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

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1913 Jessie Wilson and Francis Bowes Sayre 1914 Eleanor Wilson and William Gibbs McAdoo

Jessie Wilson (above) selected a Persian vase filled with orchids to top off her wedding cake in 1913. The cake made for her sister Eleanor (below) the following year was topped with a miniature chapel.

ALL IMAGES: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

For the next White House wedding, that of Alice Roosevelt and Nicholas Longworth in 1906, the public was treated to the knowledge that the cake was “three feet across and a foot in thickness,” consisting of “four layers of cake with icing in between each.” On top of the cake rested “sugar cupids made after the exact pattern of those which ornamented the cake of Miss Roosevelt’s grandmother.”13 Not only did the description of her cake travel the country, at least one piece did, too. A friend who had attended the wedding sent Dr. H. S. Kinsmonth, a member of the Asbury Park, New Jersey, city council, a piece of Alice Roosevelt’s cake. Dr. Kinsmonth then presented it to the council “as a souvenir of one of the most celebrated weddings that has ever taken place in this country.”14 Written descriptions of White House wedding cakes were enhanced with photographs by the time of Jessie Wilson’s wedding to Francis Bowes Sayre in 1913. Interest in the marital spectacle was so great that the cake merited entire news articles devoted solely to its description. The impressive confection, made by Mme Blanche of New York, who had also provided Alice Roosevelt’s cake, was described as a simple design set off by “a Persian vase, supplied by the bride-to-be, in the center,” which held a bouquet of orchids. A similar cake was made for the express purpose of filling 125 small white boxes for guests to take home.15 There was not enough cake to be sent to the writers of the hundreds of letters that arrived at the mansion asking for a slice;16 instead the public had to be satisfied with a photograph. This wedding marked the first time the public was able to see the actual cake in photograph form, rather than imagining it from written description.

Eleanor Wilson was wed in the White House less than a year later. Her cake, while described as “not nearly so large as that at the wedding of Miss Jessie Wilson,” was still “imposing with its mounds of white icing,” and a miniature chapel decorated the top. Pieces of the cake were placed in white boxes for guests and “dozens of boxes were sent broadcast over the country” to friends.17 Eleanor and Jessie’s cousin, Alice Wilson, was the next White House bride, in August 1918, with a cake described simply as “a typical bridal cake, a ‘white’ cake of large size ornamented only with fancy frosting.”18

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Luci Johnson’s wedding cake was a seven-layer summer fruit cake, baked well ahead of the event and decorated with sugar swans, roses, and lilies-of-thevalley. White House pastry chef Ferdinand Louvat and New York pastry chef Maurice Bonté stood on scaffolding to assemble the cake in the East Room.

First Lady Lady Bird Johnson’s pleased reaction was captured when she previewed the cake ahead of dressing for the wedding. The bride and groom cut the cake during the reception as the president looked on, and guests were given slices to take home in heart-shaped monographed boxes, one of which (cake included) is preserved in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

This recipe (right) for the top layer of the cake, a small bride’s cake for the couple to take on their honeymoon, was a favorite of Luci’s and shared by Mrs. Roy Folk Beal, a mother of bridesmaid Betty Beal.

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1966 Luci Baines Johnson and Patrick Nugent

D E TA I L A N D C U T T I N G O F C A K E : G E T T Y I M A G E S / R E C I P E A N D M R S . J O H N S O N : L B J L I B R A R Y A L L O T H E R S : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

Almost a quarter of a century passed before the next White House wedding. In 1942, Harry Hopkins, an adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, married Louise Macy in the upstairs Oval Room. It was a simple ceremony featuring a cake frosted with the couples’ signs of the zodiac and sculpted by Roosevelt intimate Eric Gugler, the architect of the new West Wing.19 The White House did not see another wedding for more than twenty years, but the next one changed how the American public was able to witness the wedding cake and all its symbolism. In 1966, Luci Baines Johnson, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson, married Patrick Nugent at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, and then the couple returned to the White House for a reception. The wedding cake was a seven-tier summer fruit cake decorated with sugar swans, roses, and lilies of the valley. The newspapers showed photographs of the cake and reported that each guest received a slice to take home “in a white satin covered, heart-shaped box bearing, in gold, the initials of the bride and groom.”20 One slice in its box was donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, marking a new way for Americans to participate in White House weddings, for they could view the actual cake, even years after it was the ritual centerpiece at the reception. Moreover, the recipe for the cake was released to the newspapers so that those interested then and now might make their own versions.21

c h o c o l at e c a k e 1 stick margarine or butter 2 cups sugar 2 cups regular flour, sifted 2 eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla ½ cup buttermilk 2 squares unsweetened chocolate 1 cup hot water 1 teaspoon baking soda Melt chocolate in double boiler. Cream butter and sugar, add eggs. Sift flour and add alternately with milk, then add ½ cup hot water to melted chocolate. Put other ½ cup water in a pan and bring to a boil (this is important). To this add soda and immediately add this to chocolate mixture. Pour chocolate mixture into the batter, add vanilla. Bake in greased loaf pan at 325˚F. Cake will pull away from sides of pan when done. *Mrs. Beale does not ice the cake. She says it is at its best by the third day, grows more moist with age. She wraps it in foil and keeps it in the refrigerator.

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The following year, when Luci’s sister Lynda married Captain Charles Robb in the East Room of the White House, the recipe was also released to the newspapers. The rich, old-fashioned pound cake with raisins was 6 feet tall, weighed in at 250 pounds, and was decorated with sugar scrolls, roses, and love birds. Small squares of the cake were “wrapped in red foil on a red lace tart . . . packed in a heart-shaped box of white satin,” and given to guests as favors.22 Again a box with cake inside was donated to the Smithsonian.

1967 Lynda Bird Johnson and Charles Robb

opposite

Newlyweds Lynda and Chuck Robb are seen making a ceremonial first cut of their wedding cake with Captain Robb’s sword, a tradition in military weddings. The recipe for the old fashioned pound cake was released for publication prior to the ceremony so that people could bake their own version. Small pieces of the cake, measuring approximately 1½ inches square, were given to guests in heart-shaped boxes to take home. The piece pictured here was sent to the Smithsonian Institution as part of the press packet and remains in the collection of the National Museum of American History.

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CUTTING OF CAKE: GETTY IMAGES A L L O T H E R S : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

o l d fa s h i o n e d p o u n d c a k e 1 pound powdered sugar 1 pound butter 1 pound cake flour 12 eggs Flavor with mace and lemon rind.

Whip butter until light, add sugar, and mix for three minutes. Add eggs, two at a time, and continue to mix. Add flour and mix lightly but fully. Bake in paper lined pans at 275 degrees for about 1 hour. *Note: Lynda Johnson Robb’s cake included raisins.

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1971 Tricia Nixon and Edward Cox

The next White House bride’s cake was for the wedding of Tricia Nixon, daughter of President Richard Nixon, and Edward Cox. It was also shared with the public via a donation and the release of the recipe in advance. But home bakers and food critics declared their results for the lemon pound cake recipe a soupy mess, speculating that the White House had erred in the number of egg whites versus whole eggs. The debate surrounding the recipe was labeled “The Great Cake Controversy” by the New York Times.23 Fortunately for all involved, the recipe came together beautifully for the wedding It was a “six-tiered . . . 350 pound, lemon-flavored pound cake . . . standing six feet . . . decorated with blown sugar love bird[s] and the initials ‘PN’ and ‘EC.’”24 The piece given to the Smithsonian after the ceremony still sits solidly in its box.

Newlyweds Tricia Nixon and Edward Cox slice their wedding cake, a boxed piece of which joined slices from the two Johnson weddings in the collection of the National Museum of American History. Measuring approximately 2 inches square, the hardened cake now has the appearance of a dried sponge.

Prior to the wedding, newspapers chronicled the difficulty home bakers reported with the cake recipe released by the White House in advance of the wedding.

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CUTTING OF CAKE: AP IMAGES A L L O T H E R S : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

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nationalism in Victorian England, see Emily Allen, “Culinary Exhibition: Victorian Wedding Cakes and Royal Spectacle,” Victorian Studies 45, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 457–84.

4. Louisa Catherine Adams, diary, March 13, 1820, in A Traveled First Lady: The Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams, ed.

Margaret A. Hogan and C. James Taylor (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 252.

5. Marie Smith and Louise Durbin, White House Brides (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1966), 36.

6. Thomas Pendel, Thirty-Six Years in the White House (Washington, D.C.: Neale Publishing Company, 1902), 75–76.

7. “The White House Wedding,” Washington Post, June 19, 1878.

8. “Miss Folsom in the City,” Washington Post, June 2, 1886.

9. “Married!” Washington Post, June 3, 1886.

10. “His Wedding Day,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 2, 1886.

11. “Mrs. Grover Cleveland,” Harper’s Bazaar, July 24, 1886.

12. See the websites of the Grover Cleveland Birthplace State Historic Site in Caldwell, New Jersey, www.nps.gov and https:// presidentcleveland.org. Also see Eve M. Kahn, “Cakes for Celebrities, Coveted by Collectors,” New York Times, May 10, 2013.

13. “Good Fortune in All Omens,” Boston Daily Globe, February 17, 1906.

14. “Wedding Cake for Council,” Washington Post, February 20, 1906.

15. “Vase and Orchids for Wilson Wedding Cake,” New York Tribune, November 12, 1913.

16. “No Big Wedding Cake at Wilson Nuptial,” Atlanta Constitution, November 22, 1913.

TOP LEF T: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / TOP CENTER: RUTHERFORD B. HAYES PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY ALL OTHERS : WHITE HOUSE HISTORICA L ASS OCIATION

17. “Secretary M’Adoo Weds Miss Wilson,” New York Tribune, May 8, 1914.

18 “Fifteenth White House Bride,” Washington Post, August 8, 1918.

To satisfy a public eager for a glimpse of the bride in her wedding gown and hungry for every detail including the flavor of the cake, the media have long made White House weddings front page news.

Standing in as a “guest” for the American people, the National Museum of American History preserves reminders of the weddings in its collection. As seen in the display above, visitors to the Smithsonian can view cake boxes, programs, and photographs.

Standing in as a “guest” representing the American people, the National Museum of American History now preserves these three cake boxes, with the all-important cake itself still inside, though no longer edible. This tradition could, however, be changing. A recent White House wedding—that of Anthony Rodham, First Lady Hillary Clinton’s brother, and Nicole Boxer in 1994—was kept almost as private as those in the mansion’s early days, much to the chagrin of journalist Faye Fiore. “What have we come to?” she lamented when it became clear no details on the ceremony were forthcoming, “All we want to know is . . . What flavor is the cake?”25 There was no written description and no photograph. Is this the beginning of a new phase, a return to the first, earliest White House tradition, or simply a one-off?

We will have to wait until the next White House wedding to know for sure!

19. Adelaide Kerr, “She Got the Job,” Washington Post, July 26, 1942.

20. Dorothy McCardle, “Real Lilies Crown the Cake,” Washington Post–Times Herald, July 26, 1966.

21. Louise Hutchinson, “Chefs Batter Up for Luci,” Chicago Tribune, July 26, 1966.

22. “Lynda Bird Johnson Robb,” Washington Post–Times Herald, December 10, 1967, D1.

23. “No Retest, White House Decides,” New York Times, June 3, 1971.

24. Judith Martin, “Triumph of Wedding Tradition,” Washington Post–Times Herald, June 6, 1971.

25. Faye Fiore, “Keeping Lid on White House Wedding,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1994.

NOTES 1.

See, for the general history of the wedding cake, Simon Charsley, Wedding Cakes and Cultural History (London: Routledge, 1992); Carol Wilson, “Wedding Cake: A Slice of History,” Gastronomica 5, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 69–72.

2. “Bride Cuts the Cake; Sister Gets Ring; All Dance Tango,” Washington Post, November 26, 1913.

3. For more on the visual consumption of wedding cakes, its origins and implications, with particular respect to its role in

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PRESIDENTIAL SITES Quarterly Feature

A Celebration at HAREWOOD A Washington Home for a Madison Wedding BRUCE WHITE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE HISTORICA L ASS OCIATION

R O B E RT G R O G G A N D WA LT E R WA S H I N G T O N

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previous spread

A Washington family Bible set amid family heirlooms evokes the scene in 1794 when James and Dolley Madison were wed in this room at Harewood. left

t h e y w e r e a n u n l i k e ly c o u p l e , Dolley and James, she a 24-year-old widow with a twoyear-old son, he a 43-year-old bachelor once jilted in love. She was outgoing and gregarious. He was shy. She stood 5 feet, 7 inches tall; he was 5 feet 4.

She had been instructed at home and in Quaker schools.1 He was a graduate of the College of New Jersey (today’s Princeton University), an avid reader, and thoroughly absorbed in the life of the mind.2 He was, in fact, famous—a political leader recognized as “The Father of the Constitution” and author of the Bill of Rights, currently a representative from Virginia to the U.S. Congress. Yet they married.

Dolley Payne Todd and James Madison wed at Harewood, the Virginia home of Dolley’s sister Lucy Payne Washington and George Steptoe Washington, the son of President George Washington’s brother Samuel. Samuel had built Harewood in 1769–70 on property just west of the Virginia Blue Ridge where other Washington family members also built estates. Today Harewood is in West Virginia, just outside Charles Town. George Steptoe had inherited it at age 10, on his father’s death. As a young man studying law in Philadelphia with Edmund

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Randolph, he met and married Lucy Payne, Dolley’s younger sister. They eloped—he was 22 and she was 15—and returned to Harewood where they raised three sons. In September 1794 it was this family connection that brought Dolley Todd from Hanover County, Virginia, where she had been visiting with relatives, to wed James Madison, who traveled from Montpelier, his father’s Virginia estate.

Though Dolley—as she came to be called throughout her entire life—was born in North Carolina in 1768, her parents soon returned to Virginia, where they had both been raised. Her earliest memories dated from Hanover County, outside Richmond. In 1783 her parents moved to Philadelphia, the largest city in North America, the center of finance, and soon the temporary capital of the United States. It was also a city with a large Quaker population, and their faith was important to the Paynes. Despite John Payne’s efforts, his business failed in 1789, and his wife, Mary Coles Payne, opened a boardinghouse to support her family. On January 7, 1790, daughter Dolley married John Todd Jr., a promising young Quaker lawyer, in the Pine Street Meeting House. Their Quaker marriage certificate read:

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L E F T : L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S / R I G H T : YA L E U N I V E R S I T Y A R T G A L L E R Y O P P O S I T E : R I C K F O S T E R F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

James Madison (as portrayed by Charles Willson Peale, 1783) and Dolley Payne Todd Madison (c. 1805–10) were an unlikely couple.

Harewood, the Washington family home as it appears today. The stone house near Charles Town, West Virginia, was the site of the 1794 marriage of James and Dolley Madison. At the time of the marriage, Harewood was the home of Dolley Madison’s sister Lucy Payne Washington and her husband George Steptoe Washington. Washington died in 1809, leaving Lucy a widow with four children. The Madisons would later return Lucy’s favor by hosting her second marriage to Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd at the White House in 1812. It was the first documented White House wedding.

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and the said John Todd taking the said Dolly Payne by the hand did in a solemn manner openly declare that he took her the said Dolly Payne to be his wife promising with Divine assistance to be unto her a loving and faithful husband until death should separate them.

And then in the same assembly the said Dolly Payne did in like manner declare that she took him the said John Todd to be her husband promising with Divine assistance to be unto him a loving and faithful wife until death should separate them.3 The Todds’ first child, John Payne Todd, was born two years later, and a second son, William Temple Todd, was born seventeen months after that. Little is known of their family life, but eighteenth-century marriages were extremely private.4 One of the very few extant signs of affection between them is a July 1793 letter in which Todd wrote, “I hope my dear Dolley is well & my sweet little Payne can lisp Mama in a stronger Voice than when his Papa left him.”5 John Todd’s law practice flourished, and in November 1791 the couple purchased a substantial brick home on the corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets. Besides their small family, Dolley’s younger sister Anna lived in the house, as did several of Todd’s law clerks.6 The Todds’ world came to an end in early August 1793, when the first cases of yellow fever appeared in Philadelphia. Refugees from the slave revolts in Haiti arriving in East Coast ports may have brought mosquitoes with them. In the next three months, until the first frosts that would kill the mosquitoes, almost 10 percent of the city’s population (then about fifty thousand) died, an average of four hundred every week. Medical knowledge was primitive, and no one had a scientific explanation for what was causing the disease. Likewise, treatment relied on bleeding and purging, both of which we now know only weakened patients. The sickness struck indiscriminately, and the only remedy that seemed to work was to leave the city. Although not understood at the time, leaving was probably the best approach, for moving inland put distance between low-lying stagnant water along the river where the mosquitoes bred. As the number of deaths mounted, John Todd took his wife and sons to the countryside, about 2 miles from the city center, and then returned to Philadelphia to nurse his parents, help others, and write wills.

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In early October 1793 Dolley Todd wrote to her brother-in-law, James Todd: Oh my dear Brother what a dread prospect has thy last Letter presented to me! A reveared Father in the Jaws of Death, & a Love’d Husband in perpetual danger—I have long wished for an oppertunity of writeing to thee & enquireing what we could do? I am almost destracted with distress & apprehension—is it two late for their removal? or can no interfearance of their Earthly friends rescue them from the general fate? I have repeatedly Entreated John to leave home from which we are now unavoidably Banished—but alass he cannot leave his Father.7 On October 2, probably about when this letter was written, Todd senior died, and ten days later his wife also died. Realizing that he was also ill, John Todd left Philadelphia to join his wife. He died October 24, the same day his and Dolley’s infant son, William, also died. Dolley, feverish and weak, survived and though exhausted was able to care for her two-year-old son, John Payne, and her 14-yearold sister, Anna. Within a few weeks frosts killed the mosquitoes, and the epidemic ended almost as suddenly as it had begun.

Dolley Todd had little time for grief, for absorbing the impact—legal and logistical—of four deaths came with unimaginable burdens. Letters to her brother-in-law show a woman willing to confront the complexity of settling her husband’s and her in-laws’ estates, but she had little choice. James Todd must have suggested that John Todd’s library could be sold for ready cash. Dolley’s reply reveals her desire to protect her son and give him a legacy from his father: I was hurt My dear Jamy that the Idea of his Library should occur as a proper source for raising money. Book’s from which he wished his Child improved, shall remain sacred, & I would feel the pinching hand of Poverty before I disposed of them. I have not time to say much but trust in Heaven ‘all will be rite’ & that our homes may yet afford us a plentiful assilum— with Love to you all. 8 She wrote again the next week “in order to obtain some information concerning transactions in town. . . . I wrote thee some days ago, requesting

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a copy of the Will & the papers contain’d in the Trunk.”9 The letters continued through the winter, and in early March 1794 Dolley received an accounting from James: I herewith enclose the accot. of Marg’t Harveys receipts & expenditures while employed in our family, also the accot. of the Estate of my mother Mary Todd, and my accot. of the Estate of thy late husband. Thee will perceive that I have credited the Estate of Mary Todd with the whole of what was bequeathed to her altho’ I have not received from the Estate of my father any part of the £100 left in Cash. I have also credited the Estate of thy late husband with his full proportion of our mother’s Estate.10 So the estates were settled, and the young widow turned toward renting her house and soon to preparing to pay attention to the congressman from Virginia.

James Madison was a truly distinguished figure. He had been active in political affairs since the early 1770s, starting with his local revolutionary committee of safety for Orange County, continuing with the Continental Congress, and then with the Confederation Congress. He was one of the first to realize that the Articles of Confederation were too weak to channel the states into a union that would be greater than the sum of its parts. He was the author of the Virginia Plan that served as the point of discussion once the participants at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 realized they must come up with something new rather than merely “fixing” the Articles of Confederation. In support of the Constitution they drafted, Madison wrote twenty-nine of the eighty-five essays that came to be known as The Federalist Papers. In 1794 he was in Philadelphia as a congressman from Virginia, serving in the House of Representatives where he had advocated passage of the Bill of Rights. Serving in the Senate was his colleague Aaron Burr of New York, who had once lodged in Dolley Todd’s mother’s boardinghouse.11 In May 1794 Dolley Todd wrote an excited note to her friend Eliza Collins: “Dear Friend, thou must come to me. Aaron Burr says that the great little Madison has asked to be brought to see me this evening.”12 Nothing is known of that first meeting, but it must have been satisfactory, for on June 1, 1794, Dolley received a letter from a close friend, Catherine Thompson Coles:

Now for Madison he told me I might say what I please’d to you about him to begin, he thinks so much of you in the day that he has Lost his Tongue, at Night he Dreames of you & Starts in his Sleep a Calling on you to relieve his Flame for he Burns to such an excess that he will be shortly consumed & he hopes that your Heart will be callous to every other swain but himself he has Consented to every thing that I have wrote about him with Sparkling Eyes.13

By August, Dolley Todd had accepted James Madison’s proposal of marriage and received from him this reply: “I recd. some days ago your precious favor from Fredb. I can not express, but hope you will conceive the joy it gave me.”14 Early September still lacked a few weeks of being a year since John Todd’s death, and Quaker custom was to wait a year before remarriage. But with a suitor willing to take on a two-year-old boy, as well as a younger sister to protect, Dolley may have been willing to ignore Quaker tradition, especially since Madison was an Episcopalian and she would be read out of the meeting for marrying him in any case, as she was.

On Monday, September 15, 1794, Dolley Payne Todd and James Madison were wed in the paneled drawing room at Harewood. The Reverend Alexander Balmain, rector of Christ Episcopal Church in nearby Winchester, performed the ceremony.15 His wife, Lucy Taylor, was a Madison cousin, and the event was a family affair. In attendance were George and Lucy Washington, Harriot Washington (George Steptoe’s sister), Mary Payne (Dolley’s mother) and her children John, Anna, and Mary, and James Madison’s sister Fanny.16 The next day Dolley wrote to her friend Eliza: And as a proof my dearest Eliza of that confidence & friendship which has never been interrupted between us I have stolen from the family to commune with you—to tell you in short, that in the cource of this day I give my Hand to the Man who of all other’s I most admire—You will not be at a loss to know who this is as I have been long ago gratify’d In havening your approbation—In this Union I have every thing that is soothing and greatful in prospect—& my little Payne will have a generous & tender protector.17 James Madison, too, wrote of his wedding to his friends. Henry Lee, known as “Light Horse Harry,”

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H A R EWO O D A N D WA S H I N GT O N FA M I LY H O M E S I N J E F F E R S O N C O U N T Y, W E ST V I RG I N I A

In what is today Jefferson County, West Virginia, there were once seven homes built by members of the Washington family. The family’s interest in the area dates to the early surveys made in the Shenandoah Valley by the young George Washington for Thomas, Lord Fairfax, who had inherited more than 5 million acres between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers.

The Washingtons were closely allied with Fairfax.

George Washington’s older half-brother Lawrence married Anne Fairfax in 1743, and George was good friends with Anne’s brother George William and his wife Sally.24

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Walter Washington (above) reflects on scenes in his family home, preserved now for generations: “I’ve always liked the way the light comes into this room, and this picture (opposite) really captures that quality. The pianoforte was owned by Lucy Payne Washington. It was made in Vienna about 1800 by Andre Stein. We do not know how it arrived here, and it has not been played for years. The portrait above the piano is of Lucy, and John Drinker, who was a regional artist, painted it, probably in the late 1790s. The frame is not the original; it was replaced in the 1960s. The crack in the paneling behind the portrait happened when central heat was installed throughout the house in the 1960s. For a long time we had only one of the two chairs, the ones with the red seats seen here. But we found the second in the cellar, in total disrepair. It looked like it might have been broken in a bar fight. But now it has been repaired and sits here with its companion. The pair dates from about 1810. The floor is the original one laid down when the house was built. As far as I know it has never been refinished. As a child I remember watching my parents go over each board with steel wool to remove the grime. The job finished, they carefully waxed the wood, as so it remains.

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A B O V E : R I C K F O S T E R F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N O P P O S I T E : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

replied, “I hear with real joy that you have joined the happy circle & that too in the happiest manner.

To your lady present my most respectful congratulations. She will soften I hope some of your political asperitys.”18 To Thomas Jefferson, Madison wrote: “I write at present from the seat of Mr. G. Washington of Berkeley,19 where, with a deduction of some visits, I have remained since the 15th. Ult: the epoch at which I had the happiness to accomplish the alliance which I intimated to you I had been sometime soliciting.”20 To his father, he wrote: “On my arrival here I was able to urge so many conveniences in hastening the event which I solicited that it took place on the 15th. Ult.”21 Madison concluded his letter letting his father know that he, Dolley, Anna Payne, and Harriot Washington were visiting with his sister, Nelly Conway Hite, who lived at Belle Grove,22 south of Winchester, after spending one night with the Balmains in Winchester.

Dolley Payne Todd Madison, who had suffered so many losses, now had a new and enlarged family. Neither she nor James could imagine or predict what lay ahead, but they must have sensed they would not lead ordinary lives. Through all the coming years they remained devoted to one another.

Because they were so seldom apart, only a few letters remain to give insight into their forty-two-year marriage. But one, from Dolley to James in 1805, gives clues: “A few hours only have passed since you left me my beloved,” she wrote, “and I find nothing can releave the oppression of my mind by speaking to you in this only way.” She concludes, “Adieu, my beloved, our hearts understand each other.”23

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In describing this view, Walter Washington explains: “James and Dolley stood in front of this fireplace as the wedding service was read. The portrait over the fireplace is of Bushrod Washington, son of John Augustine Washington, and nephew of President George Washington.

Bushrod Washington inherited Mount Vernon from his uncle and served as an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court, 1798–1829. Looking at this picture makes me realize that I live in a place that six generations of my family have called home, amidst all the things that they have acquired.

The Bible on the table to the right of the mantel is a family Bible, but it is one of several. The books were bought by someone, I don’t know who and probably before the Civil War, and they have become part of the fabric of the place. The bust belonged to Patty Willis, my great-aunt.

She was born and raised in Charles Town and was a member of the Provincetown Art Colony. She is the one who copied the portrait of Bushrod Washington that hangs over the fireplace.”

In telling the story of the fireplace mantel in the parlor where the Madisons were married, Walter Washington recalls that it “was a gift from Lafayette to George Washington. He gave it to Harewood, and it is believed that he gave a second Lafayette mantel to Fairfield in Clarke County, Virginia. Though that mantel is not there, a fragment has been found that matches the style of this one. Sir Desmond FitzGerald, an Irish Georgian expert, visited here once. When he saw the mantel, he exclaimed that it must have come from a quarry in Kilkenny, Ireland, owned by the Colles family. From the 1750s onward, the family quarried marble, fashioning the stone into fireplace mantels and sending them to North America. FitzGerald speculated that the Irish quarry was the origin of this mantel. In 1970 a cousin visiting from New Mexico, Kate Brown, happened to notice while looking closely at the mantel that you could make out names, bits of poems, dates, all scratched into the marble.

No one had noticed this before or remembered hearing about it. In 1987 another cousin, Mikaela Bolek, spent time going over every inch and deciphering as she could of what had been written. She came up with a list of more than twenty names, several dates, and bits of poems or sayings.”

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A L L P H O T O S T H I S S P R E A D : B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

“The chair is, I think,” says Walter Washington, “Chippendale, one of a set of six that George Washington bought for Mount Vernon. My greatgrandmother was visiting Mount Vernon when it still belonged to the family, and found this chair with the back broken out sitting on a pile of kindling. She rescued it, brought it back to Harewood, where she had it restored. The Roman numeral “III” is carved on bottom of the seat, marking it as the third chair of the set of six. “

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B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N

The paneling in the parlor where the Madisons were married, remarkably, has not been painted for more than two hundred years. Walter Washington explains: “My parents sent off a sample of the paint to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and asked what the experts could tell. They concluded that the paint was the original and had never been painted over. What you see today is the original coat of paint put on in about 1770. Over the years, more than two hundred now, the paint has probably faded a lot. It might have been much, much brighter. It is amazing that the paneling in this room is so elaborate. When this house was built it was in the middle of nowhere. This was wilderness. This was the frontier.

It is a mystery to me how such intricate and beautiful work was done.”

George Washington bought for himself some of the land he surveyed, while Lawrence Washington bought extensive tracts, and at his death left large holdings to his brothers, Samuel (who built Harewood, 1769–70), John Augustine, and Charles (who built Happy Retreat in 1780). Two of Samuel’s descendants built Cedar Lawn (1825) and Locust Hill (1840) on parts of the original Harewood tract. John Augustine’s grandson built Blakeley (1820) and Claymont (1820) on the land he inherited. Lewis Washington, a great-grandson of Washington’s older half-brother Augustine, lived at Beallair (before 1791). Besides these properties in today’s Jefferson County, a Washington cousin, Warner Washington, married to Hannah Fairfax, built Fairfield in adjacent Frederick County (today Clarke County), Virginia, in 1768. Audley, also in Clarke County, was the home of Washington’s granddaughter, Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis. All are still standing with the exception of Locust Hill, destroyed by fire in 1973.25 The American architect John Ariss designed Harewood and Fairfield. Thomas Tileston Waterman, the early architectural historian who conducted studies for the Historic American Buildings Survey, says of Harewood that its “simplicity and excellent scale endows it with great distinction. . . . It exemplifies the full traditional Virginia plan of a central hall with a single room on either side and end chimneys.”26 Of all the Washington homes, Harewood alone remains in the Washington family.

To visit is a privilege. On a sunny morning in the summer of 2017, Walter Washington, the five times great-grandson of Samuel Washington, welcomed a contingent from the White House Historical Association to let us see and photograph the room in which Dolley Todd and James Madison married, described by Waterman as “one of the best of its period in the country.”27 It is unchanged to this day, with the original paint, now a crackled grayish green, still on the walls.

NOTES 1.

Conover Hunt-Jones, Dolley and the “great little Madison” (Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Architects Foundation, 1977), 7–8.

2. Ralph Ketchum, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1990), 45–46.

3. Dolley Payne Todd, Marriage Certificate, January 7, 1790, in The Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Holly C. Shulman (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2004), http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu. Subsequent Dolley Madison letters are cited from this digital edition.

4. By contrast, more can be known of the marriage of Abigail and John Adams from an extensive correspondence over many years.

J.C.A. Stagg, “Madison’s Courtship and Marriage, ca. 1 June–15 September 1794,” in The Papers of James Madison Digital Edition, ed. J.C.A. Stagg (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2010), http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu.

Subsequent James Madison letters are cited from this digital edition.

5. John Todd Jr. to Dolly Payne Todd, July 30, 1793, in Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Shulman.

6. Hunt-Jones, Dolley and the “great little Madison,” 14.

7. Dolley Payne Todd to James Todd, October 1793, in Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Shulman.

8. Dolley Payne Todd to James Todd, October 28, 1793, in ibid.

9. Dolley Payne Todd to James Todd, October 31, 1793, in ibid.

10. James Todd to Dolley Payne Todd, March 9, 1794, in ibid.

11. Ketchum, James Madison, 378–79.

12. Dolley Payne Todd to Elizabeth Collins, May 1794, in Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Shulman.

13. Catharine Thompson Coles to Dolley Payne Todd, June 1, 1794, in ibid.

14. James Madison to Dolley Payne Todd, August 18, 1794, in ibid.

15. Ketchum, James Madison, 381–82.

16. Katharine L. Brown, Nancy T. Sorrells, and J. Susanne Simmons, The History of Christ Church, Frederick Parish, Winchester, 1745–2000 (Staunton, Va.: Lot’s Wife, 2001), 46.

17. Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Elizabeth Collins Lee, September 16, 1794, in Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Schulman.

18. Henry Lee to James Madison, September 23, 1794, in James Madison Digital Edition, ed. Stagg.

19. At the time of the Madisons’ marriage, Harewood was in Berkeley County, Virginia. Jefferson County was broken off from Berkeley and formed in 1801. “G. Washington” is George Steptoe Washington; the more famous “G. Washington” was very much still alive and president of the United States.

20. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, October 5, 1794, in James Madison Digital Edition, ed. Stagg.

21. James Madison to James Madison Sr., October 5, 1794, in ibid.

22. Belle Grove was owned by Isaac Hite, a descendant of an early Shenandoah Valley settler. The manor house, extant today, was under construction at the time, and the Madisons stayed in Old Hall, no longer standing. The manor house was in the middle of an important Civil War battle in October 1864, the Battle of Cedar Creek, and is today a part of Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park.

23. Dolley Payne Todd Madison to James Madison, October 23, 1805, in Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Shulman.

24. Lord Fairfax was the only peer to remain in America at the outbreak of the Revolution. Virginia confiscated his holdings, and he lived out his days in the Shenandoah Valley, dying a few months after the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. He is buried in the courtyard of Christ Church, Winchester.

25. For more on the Washington homes and families, see The Washington Homes of Jefferson County, West Virginia (n.p.: Jefferson County Historical Society, 1975); James H. Johnston, “Lincoln and the Washingtons,” White House History, no. 36 (Fall– Winter 2014): 102–15.

26. Thomas Tileston Waterman, The Mansions of Virginia, 1706– 1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946), 326–30.

27. Ibid., 326.

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REFLECTIONS

Creatively Teaching White House History STEWART D. M C LAURIN PRESIDENT, WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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White House Curator, Lydia Tederick, addresses participants during the 2019 Teacher Institute.

photographer George F. Mobley climbed the 75-foot ladder to capture the iconic view of the White House that reaches from the North Lawn fountain over the house and beyond the Ellipse, to include the Jefferson and Washington monuments.

A long-wished-for opportunity for the Association to re-create the famous cover photograph became a reality this summer, thanks to current White House staff, who helped with the logistics, and to the D.C. Fire and EMS Department, Engine Company 3, which made its tower truck available. This time the photograph was taken from the South Lawn toward the South Portico, and the

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photographer was spared the climb up the ladder, safely rising 95 feet on the tower’s platform. The resulting breathtaking new vista, which will be revealed when the anniversary edition of the guide is released, includes the majestic South Portico and the city beyond, as is fitting for the Association’s educational focus that has in recent years expanded to include the President’s Neighborhood.

Whether through our ongoing publications, or our Teacher Institute, or our public programing, the Association’s mission remains engaged in sharing the stories of the White House and its history over time in new, fresh, and innovative ways.

WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION

This summer, sixty teachers from across the United States participated in the White House Historical Association’s annual Teacher Institute, a program developed to equip and inspire teachers to use the history of the White House as a portal for teaching American history in their classrooms. The institute features local site visits, inquiry-based learning activities, and more. Teachers have the opportunity to spend time with, and learn from discussions with, former and current White House curators, senior residence and presidential staff, and historians.

The education component of our mission was inspired by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s decision early in the history of our organization to create the first White House guidebook. The White House: An Historic Guide continues to be a mainstay of our robust publications program, and in 2021—the sixtieth anniversary of the Association’s founding—we will publish the twenty-fifth edition of the guidebook.

When it was first published in 1962, the Association worked with the District of Columbia Fire Department to arrange for the use of a ladder truck positioned on Pennsylvania Avenue to capture a cover photograph of the North Front of the White House. After receiving training from the fire department,

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white house history quarterly WHITE HOUSE HISTORY QUARTERLY features articles on the historic WhiteHouse, House, FEATURES articles on the historic White

especially relating relating to to the the building building itself itself and and life life as as especially lived there there through through the the years. years. The The views views presented presented lived by the the authors authors are are theirs theirs and and do do not not necessarily necessarily reflect reflect by the position position or or policy policy of of the the White White House House Historical Historical the Association.

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front cover: President Lyndon Johnson’s eldest FRONT COVER : President Lyndon Johnson’s eldest

daughter Bird Johnson Johnson and and her her new new husband husband daughter Lynda Lynda Bird Charles Robb cross under the saber arch provided Charles Robb cross under the saber arch provided by Captain Robb’s Robb’s fellow fellow Marines they exit exit the the East

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Alice Roosevelt, Roosevelt, President President Theodore Theodore Roosevelt’s Roosevelt’s Alice eldest daughter, daughter, poses poses on on her her wedding wedding day, day, eldest February 1906.

February 1906. [[library ofCONGRESS congress LIBRARY OF ] ]

the whiteHOUSE house historical association THE WHITE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION was on November November 3, 3, 1961, 1961, to to enhance enhance was chartered chartered on understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of of the the historic White White House.

House. Income Income from from the the sale sale of of White White historic House History History Quarterly and all all the the Association’s Association’s books books House Quarterly and and to the the publications publications program program and and and guides guides is is returned returned to is used as well to acquire historical furnishings and is used as well to acquire historical furnishings and memorabilia for the the White White House.

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