Esther Cleveland born in the W.H., Sept. 9, 1893
On this day in 1893, Frances Folsom Cleveland, wife of President Grover Cleveland, gives birth to a daughter, Esther, in the White House. Esther, the first family’s second child, remains the only child of a president to have been born in the White House. She was not, however, the first child born there. In 1806, James Madison Randolph was born to Martha Randolph, daughter of President Thomas Jefferson.
On June 2, 1886, Frances Folsom and Grover Cleveland, a 49-year-old bachelor, were wed in the White House Blue Room, in a ceremony attended by fewer than 40 guests. At 21, Frances became the youngest first lady in U.S. history. She was the daughter of Cleveland’s late law partner and friend, Oscar Folsom.
As a family friend, Cleveland had bought his future wife her first baby carriage. After her father’s death, he administered her estate. When Frances entered Wells College, Cleveland, then governor of New York, asked Folsom’s widow permission to correspond with the young lady. After Cleveland was inaugurated in 1885, Frances visited him in Washington. Despite their 27-year age difference, friendship blossomed into romance.
In 1918, Esther Cleveland, in a Westminister Abbey ceremony, wed William Bosanquet, a captain in the Coldstream Guards regiment of the British Army. Their daughter, Philippa Foot, was born in 1920. She later held the position of Griffin Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, for many years. The Clevelands’ granddaughter died on Oct. 3, 2010, on her 90th birthday.
In 1908, Frances was at her husband’s side when he died at their home in Princeton, N.J. Five years later, she married Thomas Preston Jr., an archeology professor at Princeton University. Frances died in 1947 at age 83.
SOURCE: “FRANK: THE STORY OF FRANCES FOLSOM CLEVELAND, AMERICA’S YOUNGEST FIRST LADY,” BY ANNETTE DUNLOP (2010)