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Archive for January, 2009

The Man Who Came to Dinner

January 23rd, 2009 | 4 Comments

“Booker T. Washington, the well known negro educator and President of the Tuskegee, Ala. institute , was a guest of President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt at dinner at the white house tonight.”
It was a day like any other when the White House Social Calendar, a regular column in the newspapers of Washington D.C, inserted a [...]

The Presidential Inauguration

January 20th, 2009 | No Comments

There is no other expression of American democracy than the exit of one President for another. Whether the President has served one term or two–or in the case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, four–the inauguration ceremony is one of excitement, triumph and the bittersweet. The first inauguration was held on April 30, 1789, in New York [...]

Inside the White House

January 17th, 2009 | No Comments

January 1 marked the 208th anniversary of the formal opening of the White House, at Washington, as the official home of the President of the United States. Having taken possession of the newly-built “President’s House” in November of 1800, President John Adams threw an official “housewarming” party for this now most historic and most important [...]

Princess Alice: The Irrepressible Miss Roosevelt

January 15th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Second only to her father, Theodore Roosevelt, of this time period, no one represented Washington D.C. and the White House more than Alice. It was her antics that caused the exasperated TR to opine “I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both,” and it was [...]

The Care and Feeding of the First Family

January 13th, 2009 | 2 Comments

As “First Family,” the President, his wife and children, and any other dependents, had their needs and cares were catered to by a bevy of secretaries, secret service agents, and most important of all, domestic servants!
According to Helen Taft, “the management of the White House is a larger task than many women are ever called [...]

Social Washington: the “Colored” Aristocracy

January 8th, 2009 | 6 Comments

From the end of Reconstruction until the Great War, Washington was the center of the black aristocracy. Nowhere else in the United States possessed such a concentration of “old families,” not merely from the District and nearby Maryland and Virginia, but from throughout the country, whose emphasis on family background, good breeding, occupation, respectability, and [...]

Social Washington

January 6th, 2009 | 4 Comments

The issue of “society” created much embarrassment in the formative years of the Government. America had been founded as a democracy, yet to operate smoothly, there existed social and official rankings between Americans and foreign diplomats. Having no cabinet to whom he could turn for advice, President Washington submitted the subject to VP John [...]

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