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. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. © 2019 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
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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TOP: WHITE HOUSE HIS TORICAL ASSOCIATION / WHTIE HOUSE COLLEC TION 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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