Emma Foote's Days at the Hayes White House

                                                                                          

Emma Foote Glenn
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums

During the Hayes Administration, it was not customary to hire a staff to assist the First Lady.  Without grown daughters, Lucy Hayes invited nieces, cousins, and daughters of friends to stay at the White House to help with social events and secretarial duties. One of these was Miss Emma Foote of Cincinnati, Ohio.  Lucy had known Emma since her husband's years as Ohio's governor.  

Emma was the daughter of Jane Foote who had come from New York to Champaign County and then to Cincinnati.  A widow, Jane and her daughter Emma lived in the Carlisle House owned by her brother-in-law George Carlisle, a wealthy Cincinnati banker. Hayes had also rented rooms for the family at the Carlisle in 1872.

When Hayes became president, Lucy immediately asked Emma to join them in Washington.  Of course, Emma was thrilled. Her letters to the Carlisles give a glimpse of life at the Hayes White House.  She not only assisted Lucy for more than a year, but also traveled with the Hayes family, attended social events and state dinners, including that given for the Grand Dukes Alexis and Constantine of Russia.  

(Emma's letter to her cousin about this event has been transcribed below.}

She and Winnie Monroe attended the theater accompanied by General William T. Sherman. She enjoyed elegant luncheons given but Kate Chase Sprague. Emma shopped in New York for Lucy, delivered flowers to disabled veterans, wrote letters, and accompanied the First Lady to charity events.  Emma traveled with the Hayes family to New York and throughout New England. She was pleased when Lucy gave her a "special room" at the Soldiers' Home where the Hayes family stayed during the hot summer months.  

Although not wealthy, Emma received an excellent education. She was deeply interested in politics and appreciative of the opportunity to know some of the nation's most prominent men and women.  Her nearly year-long stay led many to believe she was part of the Hayes family.

But, indeed, Emma was not a relative. In the spring of 1878, Webb, President Hayes' second son and secretary to his father, proposed to Emma. However, Emma was not interested.  It was then that she knew it was time to leave. 

She joined her cousin Florence Murdoch in New Jersey.  Later, she met Colonel George Glenn.  In the winter of 1880, Lucy and the President attended her wedding at the Carlisle House. From then on, Emma led a vastly different life. As an officer's wife, it was a harsh existence at forts on the western frontier and in Arizona.  Always cheerful and blessed with a buoyant personality,  Emma viewed her experience as a great adventure. When Colonel Glenn died of malaria contracted in Cuba during the Spanish American War, Emma returned to Cincinnati where she lived out the final days of a full and exciting life.

Emma Foote Glenn
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums

Executive Mansion,   Washington                                                                  

                        Saturday April 21, 1877

My dear Florence,

I will send this letter to Orange [New Jersey] first so I will not have to write the same thing twice.  Thursday was the grand dinner. It was raining dreadfully, but everyone attended. Promptly at quarter of seven we all went down stairs to see the handsome table, then to the blue room. In a few moments members of the Cabinet and wives arrived.  Lady and Sir Edward Thornton, then the Grand Duke and party. he was dressed in a plain evening dress.  It was a little stiff before we went out to dinner.  Soon dinner was announced.  Right off the grand Marine band commenced to play the Russian March.  Stringed instruments, fifty of them, played all through the dinner.  They were so far off the music was not deafening.  Mrs. Hayes looked like a Queen as she sat between the Grand Duke and Constantine.  I went out with Gen. Schurz, Sec. of the Interior.  Sec. of War on my right.  The grandest sight I ever expect to see as I looked up and down the table.  It was not till after dinner that we were presented to his Royal Highness.  I had quite a long talk with him. I was not at all nervous or excited at dinner.

Nothing can ever compare with my feelings like the first dinner I took in the White House.  Then I was a bundle of nerves, could not eat much less speak, the other eve.  I send you a paper.  I can't believe I had shaken hands with his Royal Highness.  He is very sensible, not at all airy to use such an expression.  We were all sorry to have them say good night.    /signed/ Emma [Foote]

Colonel George Evan Glenn
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums

Childhood Dream Comes True for Helen Herron Taft

Venus Williams, Miley Cyrus, Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice, and Katie Couric are just a few of the notable figures who serve as role models for today’s young women. But in the 19th century, it was an altogether different matter! Barred from voting and severely limited in establishing an independent career, women rarely rose to national prominence. But Helen Herron, a Cincinnati teen found her role model – First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes.

At the age of seventeen, “Nellie,” as her friends called her, visited the White House. She and her entire family were guests of President Rutherford B. and First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes. From that day forward, Helen knew that she wanted to become First Lady more than anything in the world. Years later, she recalled that her visit to the Hayes White House was “the only unusual incident of her girlhood!”

A short time after the Herron family visit, “Nellie” met “the adorable Will Taft.” They later married. William Howard Taft became solicitor general of the United States and then a federal circuit court judge. In 1900, Taft was appointed head of the civil government of the Philippines. Helen, the mother of three children, was more than willing to travel half way around the world to live in a foreign land if it helped her husband’s career. Four years later, the Tafts were back in Washington. President Teddy Roosevelt had chosen Taft as his Secretary of War. Helen was delighted at her husband’s rising political career.



In 1908, her lifelong dream came true! William Howard Taft was elected President of the United States! It was an exciting day when Helen Taft stepped into the role of First Lady. But only two months later, she suffered a severe stroke. Although ill for more than a year, Helen Taft was determined to resume her social obligations. By late 1910, the First Lady, with the help of her daughter, delighted the nation when she hosted the White House events during the Christmas holidays.

Helen Taft became famous for her elegant receptions for prominent dignitaries and foreign heads of state. In her memoir, Recollections of Full Years, the First Lady considered the celebration of the Tafts’ 25th wedding anniversary the “greatest event” of her White House years. Several thousand guests celebrated with them at an evening garden party.

Social obligations were not the First Lady’s only concern; she wanted to make the nation’s capitol a beautiful place for visitors. At her request, Japanese cherry trees were planted. The two original trees she helped plant at a ceremony still stand several hundred yards west of the John Paul Jones Memorial. When the cherry trees bloom each spring, they serve as a reminder of a young Ohio teenager with a big dream and an indomitable will – First Lady Helen Herron Taft.

Madame Marie Selika: First African American to Perform at the White House

Madame Marie Selika Williams

When President Teddy Roosevelt invited the Tuskegee educator Booker T. Washington to the White House in 1901, there was a storm of media protest. But years earlier, the first African Americans had been invited to the White House without incident. Introduced to President Rutherford B. and First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes by Frederick Douglass, soprano Madame Marie Selika, known as the "Queen of Staccato" became the first African American to perform at the White House. On the evening of November 13, 1878 Marie Selika and her husband, opera singer Sampson Williams, entertained the President and the First Lady and their guests in the Green Room. Her performance included Verdi's "Ernami, Involami," Thomas Moore's "The Last Rose of Summer." "Ave Maria," and Richard Mullard's "Staccato Polka." Williams then sang "Far Away" for the more than fifteen guests who had been invited by the Hayeses to join them that evening.

The following year, First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes accepted Madame Selika's invitation to attend her concert at St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church. (It would be another 17 years before another First Lady attended an African American church.) After separating from St. Mary's, a mission church, St. Luke's became the first independent African American church in Washington, D. C. Madame Selika's performance was in support of the construction of the new church built in 1880 on 15th Street NW.

St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C.

Born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1849, Marie moved with her family to Cincinnati, Ohio shortly after her birth. Through the patronage of a wealthy benefactor, she began studying music as a child. Selika eventually moved to San Francisco where she studied with Signora Bianchi. In 1876, Marie made her debut as a concert soprano. Following her White House performance, Selika toured the nation, performing for all-black audiences. During her career, she made two European tours that included command performances for Queen Victoria at St. James Hall.

A leading soprano, Selika nevertheless, did not reach her full potential because of racial prejudice. During the 1890s, she opened a music studio in Cleveland, Ohio. Following her husband's death in 1911, Selika retired from the stage. At the age of 67, she accepted a teaching position at the Martin-Smith School of Music in New York, one of the most important musical institutions for African Americans in the United States. Madame Marie Selika Williams died in New York in 1937.

White House Easter Egg Roll

White House Easter Egg Roll

[Courtesy of the Library of Congress]

Slowly, silently, the White House gates opened. In dashed a group of small boys. Each carried a basket of brightly-colored Easter eggs. As they rushed across the freshly clipped grass of the South Lawn, their numbers multiplied. Out of nowhere, hordes of laughing, giggling children - some in dainty pinafores, others in tattered rags - flooded the White House lawn. Moments later, the grounds were alive with streams of color as thousands of Easter eggs rolled and bounced down the slopes. Behind them came hundreds of children, running, tumbling, screaming, and laughing all the way to the bottom. From inside the White House, President Rutherford B. Hayes and the First Lady watched with delight.

Washington's children always had claimed the grounds around the halls of government as their own on Easter Monday. Even before the Civil War, thousands of little ones gathered on the lawns of the U.S. Capitol to roll, race, toss, chase, and eat gaily-painted eggs. At noon government workers, nannies, and nurses came with picnic lunches to watch the fun. The afternoon was spent playing tag, croquet, skipping rope, racing, and floating eggshells. Only when the sun set did the celebration end.

But on Easter Monday in 1877, Congressmen were horrified to find the Capitol rotunda filled with screaming children, broken eggshells, and discarded sandwiches. Determined to return dignity to the hallowed halls, they signed a bill into law forbidding any such future events on the Capitol grounds. But even an act of Congress could not prevent the children of Washington from enjoying their East Egg Roll.

The following year, just before Easter, a boy bravely approached President Hayes and asked, "Are you going to let us roll eggs in your yard?" Unfamiliar with the event, Hayes answered, "I don't know, I'll have to see about that." When the White House staff explained the tradition, the President good-naturedly ordered the gates left unlocked on Easter Monday. Hidden from view, the Hayeses and their staff watched with amusement as children slipped through the gates to roll eggs on the South Lawn. The next year, the Easter Egg Roll became an official White House celebration and has remained so ever since.

Today the staff prepares 10,000 eggs for this unique event hosted by the First Lady, with each adding her personal touch to the 125-year-old tradition. Mrs. Nixon brought the Easter Bunny. Betty Ford introduced eggs decorated in the Ukrainian style. Rosalyn Carter presented souvenir eggs. Nancy Reagan autographed wooden eggs, and Hillary Clinton's featured the paw print of Socks the cat. More importantly, the White House Easter Egg Roll remains a fun-filled day especially for children - just as it did in President Hayes' time.

The Easter Egg Roll also remains a tradition at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio.