That 2:47 a.m. Presidential Oath of Office Ceremony
Travel photos to ponder at Calvin Coolidge's Vermont homestead
More than one president has passed away on July 4th, but only American president can claim Independence Day as his birthday. That would be Calvin Coolidge, who was born July 4, 1872. Since we just celebrated July 4th this past weekend, it seems a good time to look back on Coolidge’s surprising ascension to the presidency and one of the more unusual but evocative oath of office ceremonies ever witnessed. And, while we’re at it, to see some photos from Coolidge’s childhood home in Vermont.
If you travel today to Plymouth Notch, Vermont, you’ll discover a picturesque New England village that’s been preserved in time. It looks, in fact, almost exactly as it did on August 2, 1923, when a political earthquake shook both the nation and the small hamlet of Plymouth Notch.
That day, Vice President Calvin Coolidge was visiting his 78-year-old father at their family’s farmhouse. Coolidge had been the governor of neighboring Massachusetts prior to being plucked by the Republican party in 1920 to serve as running mate for Warren Harding in that year’s presidential election. After Harding won the presidency, Coolidge spent the next two-and-a-half years as vice president and, in the summer of 1923, was taking a bit of time off to be with his father
After doing some yard work during the day, Coolidge went to bed. Some hours later, in the middle of the night, there was an insistent rapping on the front door, which awakened his father, John Coolidge. The home didn’t have a phone, so a messenger had come from a nearby telegraph office with an urgent dispatch. After reading the note, Mr. Coolidge climbed the stairs and called out to his son in a trembling voice.
“I knew that something of the gravest nature had occurred,” Calvin later recalled. Indeed, President Harding had died a few hours earlier of a heart attack while traveling in California. Father and son looked at each other in the quiet of a dark Vermont night and tried to absorb the news.
Soon, Plymouth Notch was alive with activity. In the early morning hours of August 3, reporters who were staying a few miles away in Ludlow began rushing to the Coolidge home. Neighbors heard the commotion and came out of their houses.
Then at 2:47 a.m., by the light of a kerosene lamp in the parlor of their home, John Coolidge, a notary public, administered the oath of office to his son, the new president of the United States.
It was an evocative moment in the annals of American democracy. Fortunately, that Coolidge farmhouse is still standing today. As are many other local buildings of the period. The New York Times wrote this in a 1976 article about Plymouth Notch:
It is common enough in this country to find a house identified as the birthplace or home of a Famous Person and preserved in tribute as a museum … But a whole village kept largely as it was in the Famous Person's day—that is another story. And that is what visitors find at Plymouth Notch, Vt., the birthplace and childhood home of President Calvin Coolidge.
Those words are as relevant today as they were a half-century ago, for it’s not just the the Coolidge homestead that has been preserved in Plymouth Notch. Among other historic structures, visitors can also see:
The Wilder House, the childhood home of the president’s mother, which was later turned into a coffee shop and restaurant.
A 19th century cheese factory built by Coolidge’s father, which still makes artisan cheeses to this day.
And a building used by Coolidge as a summer White House.
These and other structures are part of an historic district that has kept the bucolic village of Plymouth Notch looking much as it did a century ago.
All in tribute to a local boy who was born on the Fourth of July and then rose to the highest political office in the nation.
Photos: All photos by Bob Riel
This essay was written for Substack, but parts of it were adapted from my book, Quest for the Presidency: The Storied and Surprising History of Presidential Campaigns in America (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2022).