At 2:30 p.m. on October 4, 1905 in in the parlor of the home of Andrew and Lemira Goodhue, with 25 friends and relatives in attendance, the Goodhue’s daughter Grace married Calvin Coolidge, a young lawyer. The bride wore a simple pearl gray silk dress with a train.
The home at 312 Maple Street was also the place where the Vermont Beta Chapter of Pi Beta Phi was installed on Thanksgiving, November 24, 1898. Grace Goodhue was a charter member of the chapter and served as Recording Secretary.
The Goodhue home in which Grace and Calvin Coolidge were married. It is now a part of Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont.
Grace and Calvin were both native Vermonters, but were working and living in Northampton, Massachusetts. After graduating from the University of Vermont, Grace Goodhue moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, to study and work at the Clarke School for the Deaf. Calvin was an alumnus of Amherst College where he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta.
The couple met while Grace was living and teaching at the Clarke School. She lived in Baker Hall on the school’s campus. Calvin Coolidge, 32 years old with his own law firm, lived in an apartment across the street. Legend has it that she saw the man shaving as she was watering flowers outside his window. He had on a cap and upon seeing the figure in the cap shaving she laughed but carried on watering the flowers.
The couple honeymooned in Montreal. Grace Coolidge ceased her employment and she and her husband began a family. Two sons, John and Calvin, Jr., kept her busy. The Coolidge family lived in one side of a rented duplex at 21 Massasoit Street in Northampton. Her husband soon became Northampton’s mayor.
According to Grace Coolidge biographer, Cyndy Bittinger, “Grace Coolidge was an important balance to her husband. He was known for being shy and quiet, yet he chose a political career to please his father. He forced himself to reach out and meet strangers even though it was always hard for him. When he met Grace Goodhue in 1904, he found a soul mate to soothe him, as well as someone who could make others comfortable in social settings.”
They shared a little more than 27 years of marriage when the former President passed away on January 5, 1933, two days after his wife’s 54th birthday..
Photos courtesy of Marilyn Stevens Smith, a fellow New York Alpha Pi Beta Phi. Marilyn is a very talented artist (I have a collection of her handmade Christmas cards). I am so very glad she chose to be a Pi Beta Phi and I thank her for sending me these pictures earlier this week as she was touring Burlington.
