Description:

Coolidge Grace



Grace Coolidge ALS on White House Card

 

2pp ALS inscribed overall and signed by First Lady Grace Coolidge (1879-1957) as "Grace" at bottom right verso. Written in Washington, D.C. on January 21, 1928. On a cream stock card gilt embossed with the presidential seal and "The White House / Washington" at top. Light overall toning, else near fine. 5.125" x 4.125". Accompanied by "The White House / Washington" envelope addressed to the same family, bearing a cancelled 2 cent black Warren Harding stamp, and postmarked from Washington, D.C. on September 16, 1923. Minor weathering and ripped at top, else very good.

 

First Lady Grace Coolidge's letter is addressed to "Marie"; this was almost certainly the wife of George R. Spear (ca. 1866-1935). The Spears were the Coolidges' long-time close friends and former neighbors in Northampton, Massachusetts.

 

"Dear Marie:

 

For mother and myself I want to thank you and George and Betty for the Christmas greeting and the gay Jerusalem cherry tree which you sent her. She is not gaining as I hoped she might. It was hard to come away but I found she was glad she was at the hospital and she likes her nurses and Miss Curtis.

 

With love to you all

Sincerely

Grace.

 

January 21, 1928."

 

Grace Coolidge's letter refers to her mother, Lemira Barrett Goodhue (1849-1929). The First Lady's mother, who had been losing weight and feeling unwell, would die at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts nearly two years later, in late October 1929.

 

Calvin and Grace Coolidge rented one half of a duplex house on Northampton's Massasoit Street between 1906-1930. The Spears were their righthand neighbors. George R. Spear was a traveling salesman and industrial executive. The Coolidges often visited the Spears for an hour or so every night they lived on Massasoit Street, when Coolidge was not in the Massachusetts Gubernatorial Mansion or the White House. Coolidge and Spear frequently played horse shoes in the back yard. Spear disproved the myth that Coolidge was taciturn by often claiming that "Mr. Coolidge was in fact a free and easy talker." (Dayton Daily News, Dayton, Ohio, November 6, 1930 issue.)

 

Vermonter Calvin Coolidge had moved to western Massachusetts to attend Amherst College, and he would live in the nearby industrial center and college town of Northampton, Massachusetts for the rest of his life. Coolidge was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1897 and opened his own practice in Northampton a year later. Coolidge had already begun transitioning into politics by 1903. “Silent Cal” became President in 1923 and served until 1929.



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