Building on his father’s legacy as an
outspoken and celebrated Green
Mountain preacher, Arthur took a powerful
and courageous stand against oppressive
and Machiavellian party tactics. He
channeled the iconoclastically-candid
tendencies of his father into his policy
decisions and changed the future
trajectory of the Republican Party.
In the introductory paragraphs of the 2017
Chester A. Arthur autobiography The
Unexpected President, author Scott S.
Greenberger notes that “We frequently
dissect and rehash the events of the Civil
War (and rightly so), but we often ignore
the crucial decades immediately following
the war. We shouldn’t. The social, political,
and economic changes that shook America
during the 1870s and 1880s were the birth
pangs of the society we have today.”
While Chester A. Arthur was busy climbing
up the political ladder, future president
John Calvin Coolidge Jr. was born on July
4th, 1872 in Plymouth Notch, Vermont.
Though his parents’ original intention was
to name him after his father, John, the
name was dropped after the first few years
of his life due to the fact that everyone
in his family called him Calvin. Calvin
Coolidge lived the first four years of his life
in a small cottage that was attached to the
back of a general store and post office that
his father owned and operated. His family
then moved across the street from the
post office to a large white house, where
he remained through the duration of his
boyhood. This house is known to this day
as the “Coolidge Homestead.”
Coolidge’s father John Calvin Coolidge
Sr. was a well-respected community figure
in Plymouth who was actively involved
in Vermont Politics. In the early years of
Coolidge’s childhood, John Sr. served in
the Vermont House of Representatives
from 1872 to 1878, and the Vermont State
Senate from 1910 to 1912. He also
dabbled in an eclectic assortment of
private professions that ranged from
woodcutting and blacksmithing to store
ownership and insurance brokerage.
When John Sr. held court at local
community meetings, he would often bring
his young son Calvin along. Calvin played
the part of the silent observer at the town
meetings, osmotically absorbing the cool
and composed demeanor with which
his father dealt with his peers. Coolidge
emulated his father’s calm and collected
mannerisms in his later years. He became
known as “Silent Cal” for the steely and
tight-lipped comportment with which he
handled all of his dealings with his political
colleagues.
Coolidge’s mother Victoria Josephine
Moor Coolidge was a frail, thoughtful, and
introspective woman whose beauty was
matched only by her tragic infirmity. She
passed away when Calvin was 12 years
old after a long battle with tuberculosis
in 1885. Calvin’s sheltered childhood
worldview was shattered by the untimely
tragedy, which was followed only five years
later by the equally devastating death of
his sister, Abbie.
Although Coolidge inherited a considerable
share of his mother’s physical frailty
and bashfulness, he was an industrious and
disciplined boy who idolized the stoic nature
of his stalwart and upstanding father.
Throughout the course of his boyhood,
Coolidge took pride in his household tasks
and chores as a family farmhand. At the
age of thirteen, he followed in his father’s
academic footsteps when enrolled in the
18 VERMONT MAGAZINE