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Cleveland 's political enemies spread rumors about his wife in order to discredit him. A Republican after-dinner speaker gave credence to the fiction that Frances Cleveland was having an affair with newspaper editor Henry Watterson . To handle the large amount of correspondence she received, perhaps more than any of her predecessors, she hired a college friend, Minnie Alexander to serve as her social secretary, the first non-family member to fill such a position for a First Lady. It was not yet, however, a government job and so the Clevelands paid Alexander's salary themselves. Frances Cleveland and Minnie Alexander set about creating some efficiency in dealing with the deluge, creating the first set of form letters to respond to the various needs and requests the First Lady received.
The Home was supported by voluntary subscriptions, and by washing and dressing done at the institution. Evelyn Cottage was named for Evelyn K. Ellis, a ward the Smiths had taken in, who worked as Mary "Mollie" Smith' personal secretary, and who became the second wife of Frank "Borax" Smith after Mary passed away. The cottage was designed by Julia Morgan, built for $5,900 and dedicated on December 28, 1906. By the late 1880s, the old Union Street building had become too small to meet the growing needs of the organization. After Charles Merriam’s death in 1887, Rachel donated her house on Howard Street. This became the new facility for a few years, but there was still a need for a new building, so in 1897 they opened a new building on William Street, which is seen here.
Frances Cleveland
The Home’s first officers were all male, headed by president S.H. For instance, when committees were formed to visit “the poor of the city” in each ward, the visitors appear to have been exclusively female, and women supporters of the Home made the items sold at the Christmas fairs. Following Cleveland’s death in 1908, Frances married Wells College art history professor Thomas J. Preston Jr. in 1913. She remained outwardly non-partisan but active in her post-White House years, serving leadership roles within the National Security League and the Needlework Guild of America. Just 32 when the second Cleveland administration ended, she was younger than each of her successors until Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt in 1915. She also lived longer than any other first lady after leaving the position, surviving another 51 years until her death in 1947.
Just before the 1888 Democratic National Convention, Democratic opponents of Cleveland published accusations that the president beat his wife and mother-in-law. Frances Cleveland was forced into the unique position of issuing formal statement denying the allegation, and praising her husband's tenderness and affection. Her mother dismissed the charge as "a foolish campaign ploy without a shadow of foundation." Frances Cleveland also made a concerted effort to support the fledgling careers of young women musicians in an era when the professional field of those who were offered the most lucrative and extensive performance contracts was limited almost exclusively to men. She sponsored a young violinist to study in Berlin and the girl became the first American to win the prized Mendelssohn Stipendium.
Home for the Friendless
If you have any information on this would you please send me some info. Thank you My grandfathers name was Harley H Vance and he named her Lois Murray Vance And I was named after her.. The Home cared for an estimated 6,500 children during its existence, including at least 643 who died at the home prior to 1904. An immensely popular public figure, Frances found her image being used without permission to sell an array of items that included sewing kits, cigar boxes, calendars, perfume and candy.
The two women decided to live together, an arrangement which continued until Eve Simpson chose to follow a more conventional path. In 1895, she became engaged to Henry Benjamin Whipple, the widower Episcopal bishop of Minnesota. Nevertheless, in a letter she wrote to Bishop Whipple on Executive Mansion stationery while visiting her brother during his second term, she expressed her genuine wishes that the couple had found love with each other.
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She immediately agreed to help a Washington African-American woman to establish The Washington Home for Friendless Colored Girls after she had come across two starving girls eating out of a garbage can and then raise funds to purchase a building for the orphanage. She was also the most visible member of the Colored Christmas Club, a charity providing food and clothing to poor local children at the holiday season. A year after her marriage, she also accepted a position on the board of trustees for Wells College, her alma mater. She was later instrumental in urging the State of New Jersey to "open up educational opportunities for girls, like young men," resulting in the founding of the New Jersey College for Women. The home was still a charitable foundation and so money had to be raised for its upkeep.
That prompted one Congressman to introduce a bill to stymie such blatant commercialization, though it never came to a vote. Cleveland frowned upon the excessive attention given to his wife, but he realized her importance to his reelection chances in 1888. Frances was featured in campaign literature and paraphernalia, even appearing as the centerpiece of one poster between Cleveland and running mate Allen Thurman. Sunday lunch was as familiar in our household as any other up and down the land. Two Way Family Favourites on the Home Service, Roast Beef and Yorkshire puds along with a dose of Billy Cotton’s Band Show and Beyond our Ken or The Navy Lark kept us cheerful.
Home for Friendless Women, Springfield, Mass
By the 1920s, it became known as the Home for Girls, and focused exclusively on serving unwed mothers and expectant mothers. During the half term holiday the Fair came to town, setting up their stalls and fairground rides on the Weaponess Valley Car Park . The big girls advised us to save our pocket money so that we could have a go on the rides and it was with disbelief that we set off one evening after tea. You heard it first, the noise of the music blaring out on the cold night air.
Many years later she told me that she still had her clothes on under her dressing gown as she had only just finished and was on her way to bed. Although the former First Lady had avoided controversy throughout her public life, her work with the NSL proved otherwise. Equally controversial was her contention that women were yet intelligent enough to vote and when they were given the vote, were not successful in politics and should instead focus their civic activities on welfare charities. In May of 1913 she was elected as vice president of the New Jersey Association Opposed to Woman's Suffrage and served as the president for the Princeton chapter. There was reason for genuine alarm when public interest in the children led some tourists on the South Lawn to one day rush the nurse of the presidential daughters pushing their carriage and giddily overwhelmed her, taking the babies out and handing them around. Despite the efforts of the First Lady, the public and press had an insatiable interest in the children and, as they had done to their mother, some elements of the manufacturing industry exploited the children by appropriating them in advertisements.
But the following morning all was forgotten as we made our way downstairs. Well it was tradition that Mum should hide them all over the house, in the pantry, the wash house, under the stairs, in the bath, on the toilet seat and so on. The game of Christmas was to find your own box of presents and not let on if you had spotted somebody else’s.
A few years after we had left Brownies, I learnt that Miss Ghrist had broken her arm and Mum agreed that I could go and visit her. I went one Saturday morning and climbed to her flat right at the top of a tall building on Ramshill Road. She was really pleased to see me and even more delighted when I volunteered to go to the local shop for a few items including some tea and biscuits. I was eager to please and found everything that she had asked for except the biscuits; what a disappointment.
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