First Families rss

The First White House Valentine’s Day Dance: the McKinleys, Ragtime, Racism & The Romance of the “Ghost Girls”

On February 14, 1901, just over three months after he won re-election to a second term and eighteen days before his second inauguration, President William McKinley and his wife, First Lady Ida McKinley hosted the fourth of the five White… Read More ›

Liz Taylor Meets Jackie Kennedy: Tabloid Fantasy to Chance Encounter & The Only Photos of Them Together, Part I

  Take a time machine to the Jet Age, that sweet thin spot in the 60s and two brunettes stare you down from every corner newsstand or grocery checkout line.   For every Khrushchev, or John Glenn, Ringo, George, Paul… Read More ›

Liz Taylor Meets Jackie Kennedy: Tabloid Fantasy to Chance Encounter & The Only Photos of Them Together, Part II

Just in case Photoplay’s dismissive March 1964 headline about Liz and Dick had suggested the wedding was a dull afterthought, the tab’s April cover made up for it, featuring the couple kissing with the lure of exclusive photos. The affirmation of… Read More ›

Melania Trump v. John Kelly: First Ladies & West Wing Personnel, A Brief History

The news reports which broke yesterday caught even the most assiduous chroniclers of the man occupying the presidency and his wife by surprise. It was the First Lady Melania Trump, regarded as functioning independently from the words and deeds of… Read More ›

Presidents, First Ladies & February’s Princess: Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s Century of Chief Executive Friends

This time of year was always one of milestones for the woman dubbed by the press as the nation’s first “Princess,” Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the eldest child of President Theodore Roosevelt, the wife of Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth,… Read More ›

Melania Trump’s Independence from the President has First Lady Precedence

On civil rights to gun control to women’s rights, Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Reagan give context to the recent declaration that Melania Trump is “Independent” from the President  Copyrighted, 2017 All media and individuals using this original… Read More ›

100 Forgotten Pictures of Presidential Family Life 100 Years Ago: The Tafts & Wilsons

From the perspective of 2017, a hundred years ago seems might as well be the medieval age. Technology, globalization, medical science, really everything, has so permanently changed the way we all live that there seems to be little resemblance to… Read More ›