November 2, 2024, Special Election issue Inbox Dancestors

05 Nov November 2, 2024, Special Election issue Inbox Dancestors

LINCOLN STARTED THE TREND OF BEARDED PRESIDENTS

Some noise was generated this election when a bearded V.P. candidate (J.D. Vance) was chosen by a major party. Beards were not a feature from 1789-1861 among the first 15 presidents.

After Lincoln wore his, and of the next seven presidents only Johnson and Cleveland did not have beards as Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Harrison all sported beards. Likely just a leftover fashion trend created by Civil War Generals. Other than Lincoln all of them were Civil War Generals, who as Commander-in-Chief outranked all of them.

I even included a picture of my bearded distant relative Civil War Brevet Major General Stewart Van Vliet at the very bottom.

However, Lincoln did not have a mustache, but Arthur, Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt and Taft did.

John Quincy Adams, Van Buren and Arthur also sported mutton chops.

To present a balanced perspective since the other major party chose a V.P. candidate (Tim Walz), with a reeding hairline, I will note that John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Van Buren (for these last two, maybe they were compensating with the mutton chops, you can see them below), and Dwight Eisenhower were bald (I included a picture of him with hair below). Of course, it’s often a fine line between bald and a receding hairline, so there are borderline cases like Gerald Ford and many others in that regard. With current fashion who knows we may someday have a V.P. candidate who shaves his head.

So for some fun with this presidential election issue, I was able to find earlier beardless pictures of all of our bearded presidents, and I placed them next to their presidential look.

In order below, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, (Arthur must have been born with mutton chops) and earlier office-holders John Quincy Adams and Van Buren, were pre-photography), and Benjamin Harrison.

As a leftover Halloween trick can you guess which president (pictured at the top) wore a beard, before he was president but not during his presidency?

A FUTURE PRESIDENT PLACING HIS BALLOT IN THE BOX

The 19th amendment granting women the right to vote was ratified on August 18, 1920. Grace Coolidge voted in her first Federal election on November 2, 1920, with her husband was on the ballot for Vice-President of the United States.

This is a photo of Calvin and Grace Coolidge putting ballots into a ballot box on November 2, 1920. This was a staged photo for the press on the sidewalk outside of Northampton, NH, City Hall

AFTER THE WORLD SERIES, WHAT ABOUT BASEBALL AND THE PRESIDENTS?

President William Howard Taft was the first president to throw our a pitch on opening day.

Since then every president has thrown out a pitch on opening day except Jimmy Carter who did not do so from 1977-1980, but did throw a pitch in game 7 of the 1979 World series. The first president to throw a first pitch at a World Series was Woodrow Wilson.

President Warren Harding was so lonesome for baseball that the Cubs came and played a special game for him in his hometown during his front porch campaign.

We also have George W. Bush being an owner of the TX Rangers and throwing out the first pitch in a 2001 Yankees game post 911 to us a sense of normalcy. We covered his love of baseball in a July 2023 edition. George W. Bush and Baseball

HAS THERE BEEN MENTION OF FACSICM IN EARLIER AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNING?

In election mudslinging I am not sure we’ve ever had two presidential candidates call each other “fascist”. I could not find a lot of material, however, when I went to look at the history of fascism in America and I ran across Father Charles Coughlin.

He was a Roman Catholic priest who hosted a very popular radio program in the late 1930s, on which he often ventured into politics. In 1932 he backed and welcomed the election of President Franklin Roosevelt, but the two fell out politically after 1934. His radio program and his newspaper, “Social Justice”, denounced Roosevelt, the “big banks”, and “the Jews”. When the United States entered World War II, the U.S. government took his radio broadcasts off the air and blocked his newspaper from the mail. He abandoned politics but continued to be a parish priest until his death in 1979.

The architect-to-be (and later famous as such) American Philip Johnson was a correspondent (in Germany) for Coughlin’s newspaper, between 1934 and 1940 (before beginning his architectural career). He wrote articles favorable to the Nazis; and critical of “the Jews”, and he also took part in a Nazi-sponsored press tour, in which he covered the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland. He quit the newspaper in 1940, was investigated by the FBI and was eventually cleared for army service in World War II. Years later he would refer to these activities as “the stupidest thing [sic.] I ever did … [which] I never can atone for”.

Below Coughlin and Johnson’s pictures is a random collection of three side-by-side articles from the same newspaper with the ends featuring clips about Johnson and Coughlin.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR DESCENDANTS KNOWING ABOUT YOUR ANCESTORS?

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