As the youngest man ever to take the oath of office, Theodore Roosevelt came to the White House with a large, young family. He and his wife Edith had six children aged three through seventeen.


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Chester Alan Arthur was a widower when he became president in September of 1881. His wife Ellen (known as "Nell") had died in January of 1880. Arthur was elected Vice-President in November of that year, and became president upon the death of James Garfield.


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One might expect that by the time the late George Herbert Walker Bush became President in 1989, all of the Christmas trails that a President could have blazed would have been blazed already. But surprisingly, Bush and his wife Barbara established four “firsts” when it came to the art of sending White House Christmas cards ( Read more... )

President John Adams and his wife Abigail were the first President and First Lady to live in what would come to be known as the White House. (It was originally just called "the Presidential Mansion" until Theodore Roosevelt later gave it the name we know it by today). The first Adams family moved into the home in November of 1800. It was a cold, ( Read more... )

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(Back by unpopular demand, and with profound apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

Tis the day before Christmas, and here at potus_geeks
The odor of past White House Christmases reeks,
From Washington to Lincoln to T.R., now to Biden,
The year passes quick, tis now time for good tidin'.


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When one thinks of who the most Christmassy President was, the 30th President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, isn't the first to come to mind. But in fact Coolidge was one of the first to truly embrace a real White House Christmas celebration and to encourage the American people to join in the celebration. For example, during his first ( Read more... )

On December 22, 1864, 158 years ago today, during the Civil War, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman sent a message to President Abraham Lincoln from Georgia. The message read, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah."


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Franklin Pierce is reported to be the first President to put up a Christmas tree at the White House, according to some sources. It is said that he did so in either 1853 or in 1856 (just as he was ending his term in office) and that he did so for a group of Washington Sunday School children. It is difficult to find a source for this, and so this ( Read more... )

During the harsh winter of 1777-78, American spirits had reached a low point. British troops had marched triumphantly into Philadelphia the previous autumn, at a time when Philadelphia was the largest city in the Colonies and the seat of political power. After the British swept into Philadelphia, the Continental Congress had fled west, first to ( Read more... )