The 22nd and 24th POTUS Grover Cleveland was born this day 1837.

Ten Notes On Grover Cleveland.

1. The thing that Grover Cleveland [born Stephen Grover Cleveland} that everyone knows is that he is the only POTUS who was POTUS to serve two non-consecutive terms. He was POTUS 1885-89 and 1893-97. He was also the only Democratic Party POTUS in the period between 1861-1913. He was the winner of the popular vote in the 1888 election but lost out in the Electoral College to the forgettable Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland would run again in 1892 and beat “The Human Iceberg” aka Benjamin Harrison.

2. Cleveland is the only POTUS to be married in the White House. He was married on June 2,1886 [his first term as POTUS} to 21 year old Frances Folsom. You would think this would have been pretty controversial. Cleveland was 47 at the time but Mrs. Cleveland was a popular First Lady. It didn’t seem to hurt him politically. They had a daughter Esther who was the first and so far only child born in the White House. Mrs. Cleveland would outlive her husband by nearly 40 years.

3.  The Cleveland’s had 5ive children. One daughter named Ruth was supposedly who they named the candy bar Baby Ruth for. There is some question about this. The last of the Cleveland children- Francis Grover Cleveland lived until 1995, dying at the age of 92. Cleveland himself was one of nine children. He had 3 brothers and 5ive sisters.

4. Grover Cleveland was 5’11” had blue eyes and brown hair. He was of English-Irish ancestry. He was a Presbyerian. He did not go to college and although he was of age he didn’t fight in the American Civil War.

5. Cleveland during his first term exercised 414 vetoes and during his second term 584 vetoes. He is second only to Franklin Roosevelt in the veto department.

6. After Cleveland died in 1908 at the age of 71, Frances Cleveland in 1913 became the first presidential widow to remarry. She married a Princeton University professor.

7. This would never be able to happen today without the press knowing- in 1893 Cleveland left Washington and boarded a boat on the East River in New York with his doctors. He had a cancerous growth removed from his mouth. He returned to work 5ive weeks later. The public never knew.

8. Before becoming POTUS Cleveland was a lawyer, an assistant district attorney, sheriff of Erie County, NY, Mayor of  Buffalo and governor of New York.

9. During the American Civil War, Cleveland hired a substitute to serve for him in the Union Army, which was legal at the time. Theodore Roosevelt’s father did the same thing, to Theodore’s later shame. Cleveland during his political career would be charged by opponents as being a draft dodger.

10. In 1887 Cleveland devoted his entire message to Congress-to one topic- he argued against high tariffs. He is the only president to devote an annual address to Congress on just one issue.