"I detest him so much that I don't even think his wife is beautiful." So spoke
one of President Grover Cleveland's political foes--the only person, it seems,
to deny the loveliness of this notable First Lady, first bride of a President
to be married in the White House.

She was born in Buffalo, New York, only child of Emma C. Harmon and Oscar
Folsom--who became a law partner of Cleveland's. As a devoted family friend
Cleveland bought "Frank" her first baby carriage. As administrator of the
Folsom estate after his partner's death, though never her legal guardian, he
guided her education with sound advice. When she entered Wells College, he
asked Mrs. Folsom's permission to correspond with her, and he kept her room
bright with flowers. Though Frank and her mother missed his inauguration in
1885, they visited him at the White House that spring. There affection turned
into romance--despite 27 years' difference in age--and there the wedding took
place on June 2, 1886.

Cleveland's scholarly sister Rose Elizabeth Cleveland: her bachelor brother's
hostess in 15 months of his first term of office. Rose gladly gave up the
duties of hostess for her own career in education; and with a bride as First
Lady, state entertainments took on a new interest. Mrs. Cleveland's unaffected
charm won her immediate popularity. She held two receptions a week--one on
Saturday afternoons, when women with jobs were free to come.

After the President's defeat in 1888, the Clevelands lived in New York City,
where baby Ruth was born. With his unprecedented re-election, the First Lady
returned to the White House as if she had been gone but a day. Through the
political storms of this term she always kept her place in public favor. People
took keen interest in the birth of Esther at the mansion in 1893, and of Marion
in 1895. When the family left the White House, Mrs. Cleveland had become one of
the most popular women ever to serve as hostess for the nation.

She bore two sons while the Clevelands lived in Princeton, New Jersey, and was
at her husband's side when he died at their home, "Westland," in 1908. In 1913
she married Thomas J. Preston, Jr., a professor of archeology, and remained a
figure of note in the Princeton community until she died. She had reached her
84th year-nearly the age at which the venerable Mrs. Polk had welcomed her and
her husband on a Presidential visit to the South, and chatted of changes in
White House life from bygone days.