08/25/2026
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๐๐จ๐ข๐ง ๐ฆ๐ ๐๐ฌ ๐ ๐ฏ๐ข๐ฌ๐ข๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ข๐๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฏ๐ข๐ง ๐๐จ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ ๐ ๐๐ข๐ซ๐ญ๐ก๐ฉ๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ๐ก ๐๐จ๐ญ๐๐ก, ๐๐๐ซ๐ฆ๐จ๐ง๐ญ
We made our annual pilgrimage to the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, on Saturday. Thousands of skiers pass nearby on their ways to Okemo and Killington in winter without knowing that this mountain pass on Route 100A houses the birthplace and childhood home of US President Calvin Coolidge (1872 โ 1933). Visitors to the popular tourist destinations of Woodstock and Billings Museum are often unaware that a drive of only 15 miles would bring them to the beautifully maintained historic site where they could once buy Gulf gasoline for 21 cents per gallon. In the tiny mountain hamlet was born our 30th United States president, Calvin Coolidge, a man with no aspirations for high public office but who found himself pushed up the political ladder through local, state, and national politics until he reached the highest rank possible, President of the United States. At that, his first partial term was the result of President Warren G. Hardingโs death in 1923. Calvin Coolidge was then Vice President and was on a โhayingโ working vacation at his fatherโs home in Plymouth Notch, when word came in the early morning hours that President Warren G. Harding had died suddenly. Father John Calvin Coolidge administered the presidential oath of office in his home in Plymouth Notch to his son by the flickering light of an oil lamp at 2:47 AM on August 3, 1923. His son, whose early aim was to be an efficient storekeeper like his father, was now President of the United States. The building where the oath was administered was the home where Calvin grew up from the age of four years. His birthplace is a crude addition to the local store across the street.
It is easy to understand how the 30th US President earned the moniker โSilent Calโ during his youth in this isolated mountain hamlet. Most of the small number of neighbors were relatives; his Moor grandparents lived next door. Calvin did not need to develop the finer points of making idle conversation because he already knew everyoneโs business. โNotch Cemetery,โ a stoneโs throw from where Calvin Coolidge grew up, contains the graves of the President, his family members, and many ancestors and neighbors. Of itself the cemetery is an impressive expression of the human desire to honor those who came before them despite the challenges of the terrain. Terrace after crooked terrace laces the knoll; gravestones tilt at crazy angles, some are becoming part of the rocky hill itself.
Calvinโs father ran the store, built the cheese factory, farmed and served as Justice of the Peace. The family led a simple life in a small village, but the lifestyle taught Calvin Coolidge the importance of frugal living and efficient management of resources. Later, as he served in the Massachusetts State House, then as Lieutenant Governor, then 48th Governor of Massachusetts, and on to Vice President and 30th President of the United States, the fiscal conservatism and careful management of budgets became a hallmark of Calvin Coolidge. To an extent he was very successful. In his inaugural speech in 1925 he stated, โI favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.โ He understood that the government was steward of the taxes collected from the people, and that federal debt would lead to greater inflation and more problems for Americans. Calvin Coolidge is credited as the last president to actually shrink annual federal spending; the figure was $3.12 Billion when he entered the White House in 1923 as Vice President, and $2.96 Billion when he left his last full year in the office of President in 1928. He understood that the massive federal debt incurred by Americaโs participation in WWI had to be whittled down. While his economic policy was popular when he was in office, the next year, 1929, led to the economic crash and the Great Depression. Some critics contend that Calvin Coolidgeโs policy of โhands offโ and lack of economic regulation were major factors in the crash of the stock market. This question has lowered the overall assessment of Calvin Coolidgeโs presidency.
It may seem surprising that Calvin Coolidge expressed his concern for the welfare of the people while supporting fiscal conservatism; he did not believe in strong federal programs to aid the people, but he did believe in promoting self-reliance and providing disaster relief when necessary. Calvin Coolidge was fiscally conservative but also empathetic to the needs and concerns of Americans. He supported womenโs suffrage and the rights of Black and Native Americans. He signed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and provided federal disaster relief during the disastrous Mississippi River Floods of 1927. Viewed by his peers through the rather narrow social welfare lens of 100 years ago, these actions must have seemed strangely progressive. Looking back, with our knowledge a century later, we can see evidence of paternalism. Calvin Coolidge was not perfect by any means, but his approach was rational and based on the values taught to him by his family in the notches and hollows of Vermont.
Sad events in his childhood also impacted Calvin Coolidgeโs sensibilities. His mother died when he was 12 years old, after years as an โinvalidโ (it is believed that she lived for years with Tuberculosis). He wrote in his Autobiography of his motherโs death: "The greatest grief that can come to a boy came to me. Life was never to seem the same again." When he was 18 years old, his only sibling, younger sister Abbie, succumbed to appendicitis. He missed her terribly. The following year his father remarried. Of his stepmother, Carrie Brown Coolidge, Calvin wrote in his Autobiography that: โFor thirty years she watched over me and loved me, welcoming me when I went home, writing me often when I was away, and encouraging me in all my efforts. When at last she sank to rest she had seen me made Governor of Massachusetts and knew I was being considered for the Presidency.โ Calvin Coolidgeโs empathy for the legal, economic and social situation of women was probably honed at this mountaintop boyhood home.
Then he met his wife, also a Vermont native, while both were living in Northampton, Massachusetts. Grace Goodhue was teaching deaf students to read lips at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton. They married in 1905 and had two sons. Grace (Goodhue) Coolidge was the wonderful, gracious, friendly but private and discreet hostess of the White House who was voted one of the greatest living American women in 1931. Where Calvin Coolidge was known for his unwillingness to talk, his wife spoke in just the right way. She helped smooth over the hard granite edges of Calvinโs upbringing. Her spotlight on the needs of the deaf community was another accomplishment in Calvin Coolidgeโs administration. The Coolidges hosted students from Clarke School at the White house, as well as Helen Keller. Rather than establish a Presidential Library with funds collected by friends in 1929, the Coolidges donated the money to the Clarke School. Calvin and Grace Coolidge were devastated by the death of their son, Calvin Jr., in 1924 of blood poisoning. Calvin Coolidge would never get over the death. He blamed himself. These individuals and incidents helped develop a deep sensitivity for the plights of others within the taciturn and spare Calvin Coolidge. Later, critics would say that if only he had used his influence to establish public programs to assist challenged populations, rather than continue his laissez-faire programs, he might have been considered great. But he was Calvin Coolidge, the product of the place in which he grew up, and he was no one else.
His third outstanding quality was his extremely high moral and ethical standard. These seeds were rooted in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, but were helped into full bloom through the teachings of Professor Charles Edward Garman at Amherst College, where Coolidge prepared for his career as a lawyer. Rooted in his religious background, Garmanโs teaching was that a truly free government is based in the public service of its people, not in selfishness or survival of the fittest. Each person in government has a moral duty to help others and to make personal sacrifices; there was no room for personal gain or theatrics. Garman also taught his students how to test their ideas to see if they matched these moral outlines. Calvin Coolidgeโs highly principled administration as 30th US President was a welcome relief from the scandals of his predecessors, including those of Warren G. Harding, under whom he served as Vice President. Coolidgeโs moral high road has never been seriously questioned, although of course he has been criticized on this front, for not having intervened to prevent the stock market crash of 1929 (which happened after he left office).
The other place that strongly impacted Calvin Coolidgeโs development was the strip of Massachusetts between Northampton and Boston, including---Barre! As an interpreter at the Calvin Coolidge Historic Site said to me, โCalvin Coolidge was a Vermont native but a Massachusetts politician.โ He never held public office in Vermont. He served as Mayor of Northampton two terms. His work in the State House as Representative and Senator, then as Lieutenant Governor, then as the 48th Governor from 1919 โ 1923, immersed him deeply in the issues of Massachusetts. During these years, Coolidge commuted between Northampton and Boston on the Boston & Maine Railroad over the Central Massachusetts branch tracks, which run right through Barre! If you walk on the Mass. Central Rail Trail through the former White Valley/Coldbrook sections of Barre and Oakham, you can walk on the former railbed that carried Calvin to his job in Boston. He never learned to drive an auto, although he was handy with a team of horses.
Calvin Coolidge was a man who defied easy analysis as to his value as a President of the United States; so many elements of his beliefs were admirable, but the whole did not seem to come together easily. Perhaps that is because you would not find too many United States Presidents taking their vacations on their fatherโs farm to bring in the hay. I was amazed to find a photograph of President Calvin Coolidge raking hay on a Yankee Horse Hay Rake invented and manufactured by my great grandfather right here in Barre, Massachusetts! Calvin Coolidge stands separate in the imaginary peaks of the Presidents of the United States of America; a man you notice immediately, one who stands alone, who attracts your attention, but you are not sure why.
Here in Plymouth Notch on August 22, enjoying the fresh breeze that rose from the valley below, I thought of the impact that the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site has had on my own role as historian. It has a special place in my heart because although people connect me most often with Barre, Massachusetts, this wonderful town is just part of my ancestral ground. My motherโs motherโs parents lived in a place that was so similar to Plymouth Notch at one time. Newry, Maine, is now associated with the Sunday River Ski Area. Their home was called the โRed Houseโ and nestled along the floor of the valley created by Barker Brook and the Sunday River.
When I explore the huge barn at the Calvin Coolidge historic site with its collection of horse-drawn farm equipment, I see in my memoryโs eye the yawning interior of the barn at my familyโs โRed House.โ It always seemed cool there, no matter how hot it was outside. Behind the โRed Houseโ my memory creates the blueberry-hued profile of Barker Mountain, now part of the ski resort. Here my great uncle Earl often led expeditions comprised of berry pickers, who filled huge wicker baskets that they carried on their backs. Now I can feel the cool waters of Barker Brook as my mother and I bathe in it. My family used the brook as their water source until it became polluted by skiing and logging operations on the mountain.
The โRed Houseโ was where generations of the maternal side of the family gathered in the summer. We played croquet and lingered at picnics that required hours to consume all the calories that were offered. When I view the gardens at the Calvin Coolidge site, my thoughts go back to a certain gray-scale photo of my great-grandmother Daisy picking hydrangeas against the massive door of the barn.
My familyโs acquaintances in the mountains of western Maine included two nationally known storytellers who summered there, one being Hildegarde Hawthorne (1871 โ 1952). If the surname sounds familiar, it is because she was a granddaughter of Americaโs well-known novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 -1864), and she carried on his tradition by writing stories, biographies, and poetry. As girls, my grandmother and her three sisters enjoyed reading Hildegardeโs stories and they were fond of her. Closer to them, however, was Ruth Sawyer, who won the Newbery Medal in 1937 for her book โRoller Skates,โ and whose son-in-law was Robert McCloskey, whose beloved story, โMake Way for Ducklings,โ was published in 1941. Ruth Sawyer was a special friend to my grandmother and her sisters; although their mother, my great-grandmother Daisy, was already a wonderful storyteller, my grandmother and her sisters entered their teenage years honing their talents with these authors daily. Stories told at interminable mountain picnics, during thunderstorms as only experienced in the mountainsโฆ.
As an historian, I hope that I have been blessed with some of the storytelling skills of my maternal predecessors. Research and writing are part of a local historianโs job, but telling the story so people want to listen is just as important. Each of us, whether President Calvin Coolidge or your local historian or you, is influenced by the places that have been part of our lives. Each of us could tell the same story, but each story would be very different because of the attitudes and experiences gained in our own personal spaces.
When I visit the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site, I recall the combination of moral integrity, fiscal prudence, and social compassion that made him special. I understand how these characteristics developed by visiting his birthplace and childhood home. He would have fit in well with my paternal ancestors, who built the Yankee horse hayrake in Barre, which the President used while vacationing at Plymouth Notch. Coolidge would not have had much use for my storytelling maternal relatives, but stories must be told, including that of Calvin Coolidge. Calvin Coolidge famously said, โSilence can never be misquoted,โ but I will counter by saying that โSilence can be misjudged and misunderstood.โ
If you plan to visit the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site, bear in mind that it closes at some point in October and reopens in May. Winters can be severe there! Pack your own picnic and enjoy it in the quiet beauty of this place because food is not offered there, except prepackaged snacks and drinks at the General Store or cheese factory. The Childhood Home building is closed in 2026, with anticipated reopening in spring 2027. Enjoy!
Lucy Allen
August 24, 2026
