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President Roosevelt’s Bar Fight and More Quirky and Creepy Presidential Facts

Khalid Elhassan November 15, 2021 37 min

President Facts - Teddy Roosevelt — Teddy Roosevelt. The Press Democrat

8. Grover Cleveland’s Other Scandal

The brutal and heartless assault of Maria Halpin and the fathering of an illegitimate child upon her is the worst thing (or at least the worst thing that we know of) about Grover Cleveland. However, it was not his only seedy act. Another item from his personal life, which would amount to an icky scandal if it took place today, was the iffy relationship between Cleveland and the woman who became his eventual wife. The future First Lady, Frances Clara Cleveland Folsom (1864 – 1947).

Frances, who became and remains the youngest wife of a sitting president, was born in Buffalo, New York, the only child of Oscar Folsom, a lawyer and longtime close friend of Cleveland. When he was 27-years-old, the future president met his future wife shortly after she was born. Cooing over the newborn, Cleveland took an interest in baby Frances while she was still in swaddling clothes. He bought her a pram, used to babysit her as “Uncle Cleve”, and from the start, he doted on her.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.