Join us on Our American Stories as we journey back to the heart of Vermont to discover the profound roots of Calvin Coolidge, America’s 30th President. This plainspoken leader, a figure of quiet strength, began his remarkable journey in the picturesque village of Plymouth Notch. We’re honored to bring his story to life through the vivid pages of his own autobiography, read by an acclaimed Calvin Coolidge impersonator, alongside insights from the Coolidge Foundation.
From his birth in a small Vermont farmhouse to observing the honest, hardworking New Englanders around him, Coolidge’s character was forged in a community that valued integrity, service, and modesty above all else. This unique upbringing in Plymouth Notch instilled in him the foundational American ideals that would guide his path to the White House. Prepare to uncover how these early lessons shaped the man who would lead our nation, offering timeless wisdom for today.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
00:00:37 Speaker 2: Calvin Coolidge was born July fourth, eighteen seventy-two. He was born in his parents’ small house. In fact, in his parents’ bedroom, on the very bed on which they slept, in the small village of Plymouth Notch, Vermont. The village of Plymouth Notch was tiny, but very beautiful. The mountains surround the notch, as they call it. It’s very picturesque. Maple trees surround on the mountains, so mapling in the spring was a popular and necessary activity. It was said that Calvin was able to get more maple sap out of a tree than most of the other youngsters in Plymouth Notch. When he was growing up, there would have been only a few dozen residents, that is to say, a number of families and no more.
00:01:23 Speaker 3: It was rather isolated.
00:01:24 Speaker 2: The people there were primarily farmers and some small merchants.
00:01:29 Speaker 3: Here’s Calvin Coolidge on Plymouth Notch.
00:01:34 Speaker 4: The neighborhood around the notch was made up of people of exemplary habits. His speech was clean, and their lives were above reproach. They had no mortgages on their firms. In any debts were contracted, they were promptly paid. Credit was good, and there was money in the shavings bank. The break of day saw them stir. Their industry continued until twilight.
00:02:11 Speaker 2: Coolidge’s own father was probably a good example of the kind of work that was done in Plymouth. He ran the country Stowa. He was successful. The annual rent of the whole place was forty dollars. I have heard him say that his merchandise bills were about ten thousand yearly. He had no other expenses. His profits were about one hundred dollars per month on the average, so he must have sold on a very close imagine. He trusted nearly everybody, but lost a surprisingly small amount. He was a good businessman and a very hard worker, and did not like to see things wasted. He kept the Star about thirteen years and sold it to my mother’s brother, who became a prosperous merchant. In addition to his business ability, my father was very skillful with his hands. The best buggy he had for twenty years was the one he made himself. He had a complete set of tools ample to do all kinds of building and carpentry work. He knew how to lay bricks and was an excellent stonemaser. He kept tools for mending shoes and harness and repairing for water pipes in tinware. He knew how to perform all kinds of delicate operations on domestic animals. The lines he laid out were true and straight, and the curves regular. The work he did endured. If there was any physical requirement of country life which he could not perform, I do not know what it was. From watching him and assisting him, I gained an intimate knowledge of all this kind of work.
00:04:46 Speaker 2: Calvin Coolidge’s mother, Victoria Josephine Coolidge, was named for two empresses. She was important to Calvin. She was a devoted wife, wonderful mother. She tragically died when Coolidge was only twelve years old. They brought him great grief. Here’s Coolidge’s writing about her death.
00:05:08 Speaker 4: It seems impossible that any man could adequately describe his mother. I cannot describe mine. She was practically an invalid ever after I could remember her, but used what strength she had in lavish care upon me and my sister, who was three years younger. There was a touch of mysticism and poetry in her nature, which made her love to gaze at the purple sunsets and watch the evening stars. Whatever was grand and beautiful in form and color attracted her. It seems as though the rich green tints of the foliage and the blossoms of the flowers came for her in the springtime and in the autumn. It was for her that the mountain sides were struck with crimson and gold. When she knew that her end was near, she called us children to her bedside, where we knelt down to receive her final patent blessing. In an hour she was gone. It was her thirty-ninth birthday. I was twelve years old. We laid her away in the blustering snows of match. The greatest grief that can come to a boy came to me. Life never to seem the same again.
00:06:53 Speaker 2: Coolidge learned so much observing the other adults around him as he was growing up in Plemoth nine. These were hardy New Englanders, people who believed strongly in service in citizenship. He noted that they carried themselves with dignity. Everything they did was honest. They believed in community, and they had strong faith, and they were especially modest. Coolidge learned from the people in Plymouth Notch that you don’t judge your fellow man or woman and other citizens by their wealth or by what they have, but instead by their character. Here’s Coolidge on the people of Plymouth Notch and how they viewed wealth and class distinctions.
00:07:32 Speaker 4: They held strongly to the doctrine of equality. Whenever the hired man or the hired girl wanted to go anywhere, up, they were always understood to be entitled to my place in the wagon, in which case I—
00:07:48 Speaker 3: Remained at home.
00:07:50 Speaker 4: This gave me a very early training in democratic ideas, and impressed upon me very forcibly the dignity tea and power, if not the superiority of labor. It was all a fine atmosphere in which to raise a boy.
00:08:17 Speaker 2: He also often reflected back on his childhood, and he didn’t believe that he lost out on anything having grown up in a rural small place. In fact, he thought that Plymouth notch imbued in him the kind of values and traits that were necessary to succeed later in life. Here’s cool. He’s writing about the benefits of growing up in the country.
00:08:39 Speaker 4: We felt the cold in the winter, and had many inconveniences, but we did not mind them, because we supposed they were the inevitable burdens of existence.
00:08:53 Speaker 3: It would be.
00:08:53 Speaker 4: Hard to imagine better surroundings for the development of a boy than those which I had. While a wider breadth of training and knowledge could have been presented to me, the mind was given sufficient opportunity thoroughly to digest all that came to it. Country life does not always have breadth, but it has depth. It is neither artificial nor superficial, but is kept close to the realities. If it did not afford me the best that there was, it abundantly provided me the best that there was for me.
00:09:41 Speaker 1: And you’re listening to the story of Calvin Coolidge. When we return, more of this remarkable life—this country life. Here on Our American Stories. And we’re back with our American Stories and the story of our thirtieth President, Calvin Coolidge, as told by Matthew Denhart and also a Coolidge impersonator, Tracy Messer. Let’s continue with the story.
00:10:27 Speaker 2: He felt prepared for college, and his father was supportive of Calvin attending college, even in a time when most young people did not go on to earn a bachelor’s degree.
00:10:37 Speaker 3: Calvin set his sites high.
00:10:39 Speaker 2: He wanted to go to Amherst College, an important liberal arts school in Amherst, Massachusetts. However, he fell ill, perhaps out of nerves, and performed very poorly on the entrance exam. Humiliated, he returned home to Plymouth Notch and spent months helping his father rebuild the countertops in the general store. However, he remained determined to pursue a college education.
00:11:07 Speaker 3: Especially at Amherst.
00:11:09 Speaker 2: He learned that he could pursue a remedial term at St. Johnsbury Academy, a high school in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and through a special program he was able to gain admittance to Amherst, showcasing his persistence even at a young age. There were two professors who were particularly important to Calvin Coolidge at Amherst. The first was Anson Morse. Morse was a historian and a professor of government. From Morse, Coolidge learned about the proper role of government, the nature of our Constitution, and the relationship as it should be, between the government and its citizens. Here’s Coolidge writing about Professor Anson Morse.
00:11:56 Speaker 4: He placed particular emphasis on the era when our institutions had their beginning. Washington was treated with the greatest reverence, and a high estimate was placed on the statesmanlike qualities and financial capacity of Hamilton. But Jefferson was not neglected. In spite of his many vagaries, it was shown that in saving the nation from the danger of fallen under the dominion of an oligarchy, and in establishing a firm rule of the people which was forever to remain, he vindicated the soundness of our political institutions. The whole course was a thesis on good citizenship and good government. Those who took it came to a clearer comprehension not only of their rights and liberties, but of their duties and responsibilities.
00:13:03 Speaker 2: After Amherst College, Coolidge prepared himself to become a lawyer. However, rather than going to law school, he instead read the law. Reading the law meant that he was a clerk in an actual law firm. That firm was Hammond and Field in Northampton, Massachusetts. He learned from the older lawyers, almost as an apprentice would. He read his law books at night in the public library and prepared himself to pass—
00:13:28 Speaker 3: The bar exam.
00:13:29 Speaker 2: By reading the law, Coolidge was following in the footsteps of another a great American president, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, of course, was one of America’s greatest lawyers of all time, and he never went to law school. Coolidge was a young lawyer in Northampton, Massachusetts, when he met the love of his life, Grace Anna Goodhue. The story goes that Coolidge was shaving in his first-floor apartment when Grace was outside peering through the window and chuckled to herself seeing this young man strike willing to shave. They later would exchange letters in court for a time before becoming married. Here’s Coolidge nearly twenty-five years later, reflecting on his years of marriage to the love of his life, Grace Coolidge.
00:14:15 Speaker 4: From our being together, we seem naturally to come to care for each other. We became engaged the early summer of nineteen o-five, and were married at her home in Burlington, Vermont, on October fourth of that year. I have seen so much fiction written on this subject that I may be patented for relating the plain facts. We thought we were made for each other for almost a quarter of a century. She is born with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces.
00:15:04 Speaker 3: Coolidge would quickly get involved in politics.
00:15:07 Speaker 2: In fact, he served in almost every office imaginable, and eventually was elected governor of Massachusetts. There was a good deal of labor unrest around the country, and indeed around the world. Here’s Coolidge on the growing spirit of radicalism in America in the nineteen-nineteens.
00:15:25 Speaker 4: It appeared to me in January, nineteen fourteen, that a spirit of radicalism prevailed which, unless checked, was likely to prove very destructive. It had been encouraged by the opposition and by a large faction of my own party. It consisted of the claim, in general, that in some way the government was to be blamed because everybody was not prosperous, because it was necessary to work for a living, and because our written Constitutions, the legislatures, and the courts protected the rights of private owners, especially in relation to large aggregations of property. The previous session had been overwhelmed with a record number of bills introduced, many of them in an attempt to help the employee by impairing the property of the employer. Though anxious to improve the condition of our wage earners, I believed this doctrine would soon destroy business and deprive them of a livelihood.
00:16:44 Speaker 2: Coolidge’s first great test as a public leader came in nineteen nineteen, in Boston. The police believed that their pay and conditions were inadequate. The police walked out on strike. Panic ensued; there were riots in the city; people died. Coolidge took a hard line. Coolidge said there was no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, any time, anywhere. With that, he signaled that he would not hire the striking policemen back that they would lose their jobs. In fact, he said that they had abandoned their contract to protect the city. He would help them find new jobs, but he believed that the rule of law was of the utmost importance. The political ramifications of Coolidge’s actions in the Boston police strike had the opposite effect from what he had feared. Rather than spelling doom to his political futures, it propelled him to the national stage. He was praised by politicians around the country, even including President Woodrow Wilson. That made Coolidge somewhat of a household name in the coming presidential election. Coolidge was not selected as the Republican’s candidate for President in nineteen twenty. However, having caught the nation’s attention, Coolidge was named to the vice-presidential slot on the nineteen twenty ticket, running alongside Warren G.
00:18:06 Speaker 3: Harding.
00:18:09 Speaker 2: On August second, nineteen twenty-three, while on a trip out west, President Warren Harding tragically died. Calvin Coolidge, Vice President, was with Grace in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, visiting his father at his boyhood home. Even in those days, Plymouth Notch did not have telephone service or electricity. Word had to be sent by telegram.
00:18:32 Speaker 3: It was first received at the next village down from Plymouth, the town of Bridgewater.
00:18:38 Speaker 2: The dispatcher received the telegram, and he himself drove the news in the middle of the night to Plymouth Notch. He arrived around midnight. It was pitch-black. He knocked on the family’s door and gave the news to Calvin’s father, Colonel John Coolidge.
00:18:57 Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Matthew Denhart of the Coolidge Foundation telling the story of Calvin Coolidge and also the Coolidge impersonator Tracy Messer reading periodically from Coolidge’s remarkable autobiographical memoir. When we come back, more of this remarkable life story from little Plymouth Notch to the White House. Calvin Coolidge’s life story continues here on Our American Stories. And we’re back with our American Stories and the story of our thirtieth President, Calvin Coolidge. When we last left off, President Warren Harding had died. Coolidge was in Plymouth Notch with his father and family. And again, this is a time when there was no telephone. The messenger had been dispatched from a neighboring town to go to the Coolidge household. Let’s pick up when we last left off.
00:20:06 Speaker 3: He arrived around midnight. It was pitch-black.
00:20:09 Speaker 2: He knocked on the family’s door and gave the news to Calvin’s father, Colonel John Coolidge. Here’s Calvin Coolidge in his memoir, writing about how he learned that he was President of the United States of America.
00:20:28 Speaker 4: On the night of August second, nineteen twenty-three, I was awakened by my father coming up the stairs calling my name. I noticed that his voice trembled, as the only times I had ever observed that before were when death had visited our family. I knew that something of the gravest nature had occurred. His emotion was partly due to the knowledge that a man whom he had met and liked was gone, partly to the feeling that must possess all of our citizens when the life of the President is taken from them.
00:21:14 Speaker 2: Coolidge was now President, and he needed to take the oath of office. Rather than have a grand inauguration, Coolidge did what was practical. He gathered Grace and his father and a few others who were visiting, bringing them to the family sitting room. Colonel John Coolidge was a notary public, giving him the authority to administer the oath of office to his son. So, standing in the family sitting room with the family Bible on the table, Coolidge raised his right hand before the light of kerosene lamp and took the oath of office, becoming America’s thirtieth President. Asked later why he thought he had the authority to administer the oath, Colonel John Coolidge said, “Well, nobody told me I couldn’t.” The next morning, Coolidge visited his mother’s grave for inspiration, and then took the train down to Washington. Coolidge believed the proper course for policy was to follow the policy set forth by President Harding that meant a return to normalcy, balancing the government’s budget, cutting taxes, and letting Americans get back to the normal lives after a disruptive progressive period in World War. Coolidge thought that only by getting back to basics would America prosper.
00:22:34 Speaker 4: It was my desire to maintain about the White House, as far as possible, an attitude of simplicity, and not to engage in anything that had an air of pretentious display. That was my conception of the Great Office. It carries sufficient power within itself, so that it does not require any of the outward trappings of pomp and splendor for the purpose of creating an impression. It has a dignity of its own, which makes itself sufficient. Of c
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