Cleveland, Frances Folsom, 1864-1947

<p>Frances Clara Folsom Cleveland became the youngest First Lady at age 21 as the first woman to marry a president in the White House. She served as the 23rd and 25th First Lady of the United States while married to President Grover Cleveland.</p>

<p>“I detest him so much that I don’t even think his wife is beautiful.” So spoke one of President Grover Cleveland’s political foes–the only person, it seems, to deny the loveliness of this notable First Lady, first bride of a President to be married in the White House.</p>

<p>She was born in Buffalo, New York, only child of Emma C. Harmon and Oscar Folsom–who became a law partner of Cleveland’s. As a devoted family friend Cleveland bought “Frank” her first baby carriage. As administrator of the Folsom estate after his partner’s death, though never her legal guardian, he guided her education with sound advice. When she entered Wells College, he asked Mrs. Folsom’s permission to correspond with her, and he kept her room bright with flowers. Though Frank and her mother missed his inauguration in 1885, they visited him at the White House that spring. There affection turned into romance–despite 27 years’ difference in age–and there the wedding took place on June 2, 1886.</p>

<p>Cleveland’s scholarly sister Rose Elizabeth Cleveland: her bachelor brother’s hostess in 15 months of his first term of office. Rose gladly gave up the duties of hostess for her own career in education; and with a bride as First Lady, state entertainments took on a new interest. Mrs. Cleveland’s unaffected charm won her immediate popularity. She held two receptions a week–one on Saturday afternoons, when women with jobs were free to come.</p>

<p>After the President’s defeat in 1888, the Clevelands lived in New York City, where baby Ruth was born. With his unprecedented re-election, the First Lady returned to the White House as if she had been gone but a day. Through the political storms of this term she always kept her place in public favor. People took keen interest in the birth of Esther at the mansion in 1893, and of Marion in 1895. When the family left the White House, Mrs. Cleveland had become one of the most popular women ever to serve as hostess for the nation.</p>

<p>She bore two sons while the Clevelands lived in Princeton, New Jersey, and was at her husband’s side when he died at their home, “Westland,” in 1908. In 1913 she married Thomas J. Preston, Jr., a professor of archeology, and remained a figure of note in the Princeton community until she died. She had reached her 84th year-nearly the age at which the venerable Mrs. Polk had welcomed her and her husband on a Presidential visit to the South, and chatted of changes in White House life from bygone days.</p>

<p>Frances Clara Cleveland Preston (née Folsom; July 21, 1864 – October 29, 1947) was First Lady of the United States from 1886 to 1889 and again from 1893 to 1897 as the wife of President Grover Cleveland. Becoming first lady at age 21, she remains the youngest wife of a sitting president.</p>

<p>Frank [Frances] Clara Folsom was born in Buffalo, New York to Emma (née Harmon) and her husband, Oscar Folsom, a lawyer who was a descendant of the earliest European settlers of Exeter, New Hampshire. She was their only child to survive infancy (a sister, Nellie Augusta, died before her first birthday). All of Frances Cleveland's ancestors were from England and settled in what would become Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, eventually migrating to western New York.</p>

<p>She was originally given the first name Frank, in honor of an uncle, but later decided to adopt the feminine variant Frances. A longtime close friend of Oscar Folsom, Grover Cleveland met his future wife shortly after she was born and he was 27 years old. He was fond of her, buying her a baby carriage and doting on her as she grew up. When her father died in a carriage accident on July 23, 1875, without having written a will, the court appointed Cleveland administrator of his estate.</p>

<p>She attended Central High School in Buffalo and Medina High School in Medina, New York, then Wells College in Aurora, New York. Cleveland proposed to Frances in the spring of 1885 when she visited Washington D.C. with her mother. They were married on June 2, 1886 in the Blue Room of the White House.</p>

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