read: 28 July 2005
Calvin Coolidge’s inauguration was in Plymouth Notch Vermont in the middle of the night. He was sworn in by his father. Many people don’t know this. Many people may sort of know this, but not know the facts. Many people may think they know the facts, but don’t know them correctly, owing to many different versions of the tale bouncing about. This slim volume tries to set the record straight. It’s a collection of facts from primary sources published by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. It contains a lot of photos of Cal in Vermont, a few of them which have never seen publication before.
The brief facts are these. Warren Harding died while Cal was in Vermont at his family homestead. The news trickled out to various people via radio and telegraph and telephone and many different reporters, federal employees, and locals raced to Plymouth Notch to be the first to tell the new President the news. Many reporters came and went but at some point someone mentioned that since Cal’s father was a government offical, he could do the swearing in himself, and they did. The next day Cal and his family took a Pullman car down to Washington to start his new presidency. Somehow the story becomes fascinating reading, especially if you’re familiar with Vermonters and their ways.
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