Visits to Presidential Sites

27th President, 1909-1913 William Howard Taft Sites visited:  Taft was born in this house, 2038 Auburn Avenue in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lived here until he attended Yale in 1874. Both times we were in Cincinnati, the site was not open so here's what we could see from the outside. There is a bust of Taft's oldest son, Robert Alphonso Taft (1889-1953) on the property. Rapid City, South Dakota has a statue of every  president on its street corners.  I thought Taft's was odd not realizing until later that it was memorializing Taft being the first president to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. The first picture is my photo and the second is an older photo from the internet where you can see the baseball. Taft became a Federal Circuit Judge at age 34, was Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt, and in 1909 was elected President. He ran for and lost a second term and became a Professor of Law at Yale from 1913-1921. President Harding appointed him Chief Justice of ...

19th President 1877 - 1881 Rutherford B. Hayes sites visited: If you find yourself anywhere near Fremont, Ohio, you can visit Hayes' home, museum, and gravesite in one stop. They are all together on the Spiegel Grove estate. We could not wait for the next available guided tour of the house but we could wander through the museum on our own. Although it's not part of the Presidential Library system run by the National Archives and Records Administration (there are 13 of those), this museum was the first Presidential Museum, established in 1916. It holds a lot of interesting artifacts and information, of which these are just a few. Hayes holds the honor of being one of five presidents who lost the popular vote but still became president (the other four being John Q. Adams, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Trump). The story of the dishes was amusing 😊 Hayes' wife, Lucy, was known as 'Lemonade Lucy' due to her aversion to alcohol and this White House did not serve...