Presidents Who Shared the White House with Their Young Offspring Kids
A small portion of America's presidents have had young children of their own living in the White House. These youngsters have left their own unique mark and small footnotes in history, and the echo of their giggles ringing through the executive mansion. The ages of these youngsters ranged from 14 down to the only baby born in the White House. When President John Tyler went to the White House in 1841, he was already the father of seven children.
While in office his first wife, Lititia Christian, died. Eight months before his term in office ended, he married Julia Gardiner and fathered seven more children. Because of her mother's illness, Alice, his 14-year-old daughter from his first marriage, played mother to her young siblings. When Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861, the eldest of his three sons, Robert Todd, was 18 and in Harvard, but sons William Wallace (Willie), 10, and Thomas (Tad), 8, managed to turn the dignified mansion into an uproar.
Tad was famous for walking into cabinet meetings, curling up under the president's desk and taking a nap. Or he'd break into a private meeting to intercede for some poor family who had come begging for help. " But, Pa" he'd plead "You've got to help them, they're hungry and have no food and no one to work for them." Brother Willie was less interested in people and politics and more devoted to the theater. He spent hours in the unfinished attic of the White House directing "shows." He and his brother Tad dressed in their mother's old satin gowns and borrowed their father's spectacles as props. Ulysses and Julia Grant had four children; two were under 15 when he took office.
Nellie, 14, raised a few eyebrows as a headstrong teenager driving her phaeton carriage through the streets of Washington at high speeds and partying at all night cotillions. Jesse, age 11, was more interested in things celestial and rigged a telescope on the White House roof, where he and his father watched the stars. As the only child of a president to be born in the White House in 1893, Ester Cleveland began making public appearances almost from birth. Her father, Grover Cleveland, was enormously proud of her and her 23-month-old sister Ruth.
Curious tourists often pushed themselves onto the unfenced White House grounds to get a good look at the White House baby. Several times they knocked over her buggy, causing the First Lady to demand that the grounds be fenced. During President Garfield's brief 199-days in office, his two youngest sons, Irwin, 11, and Abraham, 9, raced through the White House halls and parlors on velocipedes (old-fashioned bicycles propelled by pushing your feet along the ground), and watched their two older brothers play billiards on a newly installed table, neglecting their studies until their tutor had to speak to papa.
Papa Garfield set into motion a dinner time ritual that included a nightly quiz on their daily studies. It was Garfield's wish to have his sons enter his own alma mater, Williams. He was taking the older boys to a commencement there when, in July 1881, he was assassinated at the Washington station. Theodore Roosevelt was only 42 years old when he took office. So, it was only natural that his brood of six children was also youthful. The Roosevelt clan had more fun in the White House than any children before them, or since.
Kermit, 12, and Ethel, 10, were inseparable daredevils, shinning up the light poles along Pennsylvania Avenue, snuffing out the freshly lighted lamps, sliding wildly down the dining room banisters--since removed--cascading down the staircase on tin cookie sheets, and surprising startled visitors with their pet snakes, lizards and pet rodents. These children inherited their father's love for animals who encouraged their White House menagerie. When 6-year-old Archie was suffering from the measles, he expressed the desire to see his Iceland pony. Brother Kermit successfully contrived a way to sneak in his little brother's pony into his room on the second floor via the White House elevator.
Young Charlie Taft was only 11 when his father was inaugurated, in 1909, but he already knew his way around the White House. He'd shared a close friendship with the Roosevelt children, which had made him well acquainted with his new home and the White House elevator where he and his friends would transport their toys, as well as stray dogs and cats in and out of his top floor rooms. Unlike his quiet older brother and sister, Charlie quickly gained a reputation as the "Dennis the Menace" of his day.
At outdoor rallies and picnics, whenever his father spoke, he would toss a lit firecracker onto the speaker's stand in the middle of the president's oratory. Present Taft, an easygoing man, would remain unruffled and continued his speech. But after his wife became ill and unable to tend to the precocious young Charlie, he was shipped off to a boarding school. When President John F. Kennedy was elected, he brought to the White House two of its most memorable young residents; a spunky four-year-old named Caroline and her baby brother John Jr.
The American public liked watching these two children enjoying the White House--Caroline, whirling about the rooms, climbing into a tree house on the White House lawn, kissing the nose of her kitten Tom-kitty, and riding her Shetland pony on the White House grounds, and brother John-John, toting a cap pistol and hopping on his Daddy's knee during meetings in the oval office. Jimmy Carter had four children, but only 10-year-old Amy was still living at home when he took office.
Amy did little to attract unwanted publicity or attention. Like other young children in the White House, Amy adopted a pet, Misty Malarkey Ying-Yang, a pedigree cat which she kept well-fed on steak and seafood from the White House kitchen.
10631 Vinedale Street, Sun Valley, CA 91352 - Phone (818) 767-3413 - Fax: (818) 767-1410
