On September 9, 1893, Esther Cleveland was born in the White House to President Grover Cleveland and First Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland. The Clevelands’ second daughter, Esther remains the first and only child of a sitting U.S. president to have been born in the Executive Mansion.
Her birth drew national attention at a moment when the country was confronting the economic upheaval of the Panic of 1893. Yet for the Cleveland family, the event was also a deeply private occasion: Esther was born in her parents’ bedroom on the northwest side of the White House’s second floor.
Esther’s arrival offers a rare window into the domestic life of a presidential family during the Gilded Age. Her early years in the White House reflected a lasting tension at the heart of the presidency—the attempt to preserve an ordinary family life within one of the nation’s most public institutions.
Image: Esther Cleveland at twenty-one years of age, via the Library of Congress; no known restrictions.
