CARTOON by Thomas Nast, UNCLE SAM’S THANKSGIVING DINNER: 1869. Nast, a Republican, became a staunch supporter of Democrat Grover Cleveland during the 1884 election. Nast is credited with creating the iconic images of the donkey and the elephant that would come to represent the two major parties.

READ MORE: Notice at the top, center of the cartoon, the small banner draped over the portrait of President Ulysess S. Grant with the words, “15^th Amendment,” and in the table’s centerpiece, “Self Governance” and “Universal Suffrage.”  This scene was the artist’s, and the magazine’s, endorsement of the 15^th amendment which had been undergoing vigorous debate, with removals and revisions in Congress throughout the year. It would finally pass the following February of 1870, during Grant’s presidency. https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xv   In 1884, Despite Thomas Nast’s party affiliation as a Republican, he found he could not conscientiously vote for, or support, Cleveland’s opponent, James Blaine, who Nast saw as a thoroughly corrupt leader. Throughout the 1884 election year Nast drew scathing cartoons of the Republican candidate portrayed as a thief and conversely, published glowing cartoons portraying Grover Cleveland as a heroic non-partisan reformer. In the words of the artist’s grandson, Thomas Nast St. Hill, “it was generally conceded that Nast’s support won Cleveland the small margin by which he was elected. In this his last national political campaign, Nast had, in fact, ‘made a president.'”

A locomotive going too fast, fires going out of control, stories about a world famous hotel, and an individual being pushed in a wheelbarrow for winning a bet are just a few of the stories which will be told at the Halloween Ghost Walk presented by the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Association on Friday October 25^th.  (Raindate will be Saturday October 26^th.)    Tours will start at the Grover Cleveland Birthplace, 207 Bloomfield Avenue at 5:00 and will continue every half hour into the early evening. The walks will travel west on Bloomfield Avenue and will make stops at the First Presbyterian Church and many historical storefronts.  The final stop will be at the well-known Cloverleaf Tavern.  Tickets are $15.00 each and will be available at the Grover Cleveland Birthplace and the West Caldwell Public Library after October 1^st. Each tour will be one hour in length.  (Tickets must be obtained before the event and will not be sold on October 25^th.)
Tour guides will include members of the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association, local historians, and local educators.  The walk will be a great way for participants to learn about Grover Cleveland and the Grover Cleveland Birthplace, and Caldwell, Essex County, and New Jersey History.  For additional details, please contact Paul Maloney at EssexNewsMaloney@aol.com or call the Grover Cleveland Birthplace at 973-226-0001.

Once again the Fourth of July Ice Cream Social at the Grover Cleveland Birthplace will feature an Historic Cookie Bake-off. This year’s cookie is the Lavender Cookie in honor of our cookie loving native son, President Grover Cleveland. Start looking through family recipes, old cookbooks or historical food sites to find your own Lavender Cookie recipe

Lavender Cookie Bake-off Rules:

• Entries must be from scratch. No mixes permitted;
• Only one entry per person;
• By entering this contest, you give permission to the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association to use your recipe for distribution and, if not under copyright, publication;
• No entry fee;
• Entries must include 2 dozen cookies: one for judging and one for sale. Please use disposable plate and cover;
• Entries must include entry form (inside) and a copy of the recipe, typed or written legibly;
• Entries cannot require refrigeration;
• Judging criteria: Most Attractive Cookie: 50% for Appearance, 30% for Taste, 20% for Use of Traditional Ingredients; All other categories: 80% for Taste; 20% for Use of Traditional Ingredients. Avoid 20^th/21^st century ingredients such as Baking Powder, vegetable shortening, margarine, etc.;
• Decision of Judges will be final (Judges are volunteers);
• Entry must be received by 1:00 pm, July 4, 2019 at the Grover Cleveland Birthplace, 207 Bloomfield Ave, Caldwell, NJ. Winner need not be present;
• Entries must be cookies and can be a shaped, rolled, or dropped. Items such as breads, cupcakes, etc. won’t be accepted.

2019 Ice Cream Social –  Lavender Cookie Bake-off – entry form

Name:           __________________________________________________________________________________

Address:          __________________________________________________________________________________

Phone:       __________________________ Email:          _______________________________________________

Any personal history of your recipe you would like to share:  _________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

 Download Rules and Entry form  – Click Here

Louis Picone – a presidential author, scholar, faculty member of William Paterson University.and Trustee of the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association gives a presentation to commemorate the 182nd anniversary of president Grover Cleveland’s birth. Photo by Janet Markman

Remarks delivered by Louis L. Picone at  Grover Cleveland’s Birthday Ceremony, March 18, 2019 in Caldwell, New Jersey

Today we gather to commemorate the 182^nd anniversary of President Grover Cleveland’s birth. On March 18, 1837, two midwives delivered baby Stephen Grover Cleveland in the back room of this home. Before he died in Princeton in 1908, he had celebrated 71 birthdays. He spent his first three birthdays right here in Caldwell, New Jersey. By his fourth the young boy had moved to Fayetteville, New York.[1]

Over the following years he celebrated his birthdays, first as the young boy Stephen Grover, and later as the ambitious, hard-working man, simply known as “Grover.” By his fifteenth birthday he had left school to work at a grocery store to help support his family. He welcomed his 17th year as a teacher for the New York Institute for the Blind. On his 19^th birthday he was a clerk in a law office in Buffalo and by his 23^rd he was a lawyer and still sending a portion of his paycheck home to support his younger brothers and sisters. By his 26^th birthday he was the assistant district attorney of Erie County, and by his 34^th, the Sheriff of Erie County.[2]

Soon each birthday marked a giant leap on his meteoric rise to the stratosphere of American politics. In 1882 he celebrated his 45^th birthday as the Mayor of Buffalo. In 1883 he celebrated his 46^th birthday as the Governor of New York. By his 47^th birthday in 1884, his reputation for honesty made “Grover the Good” a leading Democratic candidate for President. The next year, his 48^th birthday, Grover Cleveland was the 22^nd President of the United States of America. The boy born in Caldwell, New Jersey had become the second youngest president ever elected behind Ulysses S. Grant. While much can be said about his presidency, I would rather speak about the man and his character and how he treated, and how he spoke to others.

On his first birthday as president, he worked all day and the newspapers announced, “Cleveland’s Birthday: No Preparations made for its celebration.”[3] But during his busy schedule he took time to accept “Many happy returns of the day” from friends and well-wishers. He also received a bouquet of violets. It came from a young girl, to whom the newspapers claimed, the President “had been particularly kind to a few days earlier.”[4] The reporter also noted her flowers were the only gift from the public that day, but I suspect Grover Cleveland was just fine with that

Four years later, on his 52^nd birthday, Grover Cleveland was again a proud citizen, having lost his re-election bid to Benjamin Harrison.  On his first birthday out of office, Cleveland began a 10-day tour with former cabinet members. That day he awoke in New York City and after breakfast with his wife, he boarded a train for Tampa, Florida, before sailing on to Cuba.[5] During a brief stop in Washington, DC to pick up friends, a reporter noted the fit Cleveland and prophetically wrote, “he is destined to become more of a political force out of office than in office.”[6] Well, the reporter was partially correct. Cleveland would remain a political force indeed, but his destiny was not to do so out of office.

Two weeks earlier, upon leaving the White House the First Lady confidently remarked to a servant, “We are coming back just four years from today.” And just as the First Lady promised, Grover Cleveland celebrated his 56^th birthday in 1893 back in the White House. President again. Grover Cleveland became the only man to ever win the presidency, lose it, and then win again. And they called Bill Clinton the comeback kid!

In 1897, Grover Cleveland was again a public citizen. Fifty years earlier, Grover Cleveland left New Jersey, but now he was back as he retired to Princeton. Gone from office, but he was not forgotten. On his birthday in 1899, a group of young girls from Ellendale, South Dakota, who called themselves the Young Misses Conversation Club wrote the former President. Grover Cleveland took time to reply with words of kindness and wisdom, but not condensation. “My dear little Friend: I have received your letter, and am very much flattered to learn that . . . [you have] . . . decided to have a banquet on my birthday. It is a very good thing for children to come together to learn how to talk and think, but I would not be willing to have them do so much of that as to prevent them from enjoying of play. The times for play will soon pass away, and I think children ought to have their full share of romp and frolic and fun while it lasts. . ..  I hope your club will be useful and prosperous, and that you will all have lots of fun at your banquet, and in every day of your lives afterwards. Your friend, GROVER CLEVELAND.”[7]

On his 70^th birthday in 1907, flags were unfurled in his honor in Maysville, Kentucky.[8] Closer to home, students from Princeton University paraded to his house, just like they had done every year since he had retired there. That day they gave him a gift, a silver loving cup. Cleveland thanked them and said, “I feel young at seventy, because I have here breathed the atmosphere of vigorous youth.”[9]

The following year, 1908, Grover Cleveland celebrated his 71^st birthday in Lakewood, New Jersey. Two weeks earlier, Cleveland, who suffered from multiple medical ailments, checked in to the Lakewood Hotel to recuperate. That day he took a long walk and was in excellent spirits. “l have not felt so well in many a day,” he told a reporter, “I took a longer walk than I have taken in months. I feel fine. In fact, I believe I am in much better physical condition than I have been for a long, long time.”[10]

This was his last birthday. He was a kind-hearted optimist to the end. Perhaps we can best judge Grover Cleveland by what others said about him when he passed away on June 24, 1908. President Theodore Roosevelt praised, “Since his retirement from the presidency he has continued to serve his countrymen by the simplicity, dignity and uprightness of his private life.”[11] But perhaps William Howard Taft delivered the most fitting eulogy in an impromptu aside during a speech at Yale University the night Cleveland died, “He was a great man and a great president. He had the highest civic ideals, a rugged honesty, a high courage. These things will now make him happy in death. As he leaves the world he is revered, loved and respected by his countrymen.”[12]

[1] “President’s Birthday,” Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, March 18, 1896.

[2] The Graphic Story of the American Presidents by David C. Whitney (Chicago: J. G. Ferguson Publishing Company, 1973), 232-235.

[3] “Cleveland’s Birthday,” Savannah Morning News, March 18, 1885.

[4] “President Cleveland’s Birthday,” Portland Daily Press (Portland, ME), March 19, 1885.

[5] “A Cabinet for Cuba,” Pittsburg Dispatch, March 19, 1889.

[6] “The Ex-President on a Tour,” Rock Island Daily Argus, March 19, 1889.

[7] “A Letter from Cleveland,” State Democrat (Aberdeen, South Dakota), March 17, 1899.

[8] “By Order of Mayor McClellan all the National state and city flags were unfurled in honor ofGrover Cleveland’s birthday last Monday,” Daily Public Ledger (Maysville, KY), March 243, 1907.

[9] “Cleveland, Grover: From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978),” Princeton University, Accessed March 9, 2019.  http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/cleveland_grover.html.

[10] “His Health Improving,” Bemidji Daily Pioneer (Bemidji, MN), March 19, 1908.

[11] “Cleveland’s Funeral 5 Tomorrow Afternoon,” News-Democrat, June 25, 1908.

[12] “Tribute of Roosevelt,” Patterson Press, June 25, 1908.

Grover Cleveland Birthplace Caretaker Sharon Farrell, From the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association – Trustee Beverly Crifasi, Vice president Bunny Jenkins and President Dave Cowell accept the Proclamation proclaiming the week of March 18, 2019 as Grover Cleveland Week in the Borough of Caldwell from Mayor John Kelley (at back) and Caldwell Councilman Lace (at right). photo by Janet Markman

The Mayor and Caldwell Council proclaim the week of March 18, 2019 as Grover Cleveland Week in the Borough of Caldwell.

  The public is invited in New Jersey, and nationwide, to take part in GROVER CLEVELAND WEEK,  a celebration taking place during the week of March 18th, officially proclaimed by the Borough of Caldwell’s Mayor and Council to help mark the 182nd birthday of U.S. President, Stephen Grover Cleveland.
Representatives from Cleveland’s native home-town of Caldwell New Jersey, encourage gestures nationwide that reflect Cleveland’s childhood, as well as his later career. Celebrate with some of Cleveland’s favorite foods and beverages. Or, to honor his terms as President, take time to study our Nation’s founding documents and our notable doctrines.

The Museum and Gift Shop are staffed and open Wed -Sat: 10am – 12pm and 1pm – 4pm. Open Sundays 1pm – 4pm. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Parking: a ten-car lot is available on site, however, please call to confirm today’s status of parking availability, or alternatives. 973-226-0001

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CALDWELL – The Grover Cleveland Birthplace Historic Site at 207 Bloomfield Avenue will be open for public tours during the holiday season. Hours are Wed, Th. and Fri 10-12 and 1-4.  Two special weekends will have an added hour on Saturday. During 12/29-30 and 1/5-6 Saturday’s hours will be from 10-4. Sunday’s hours are 1-4. Visitors will receive a special take-away holiday treat during both weekends while supplies last. Local residents are invited to visit solo, or bring along family and friends, to set their own pace through the museum. The self-guided tour starts with three 1830s historically themed rooms; a kitchen, rear parlor, and bedroom chock full of artifacts and the stories they tell. Then two galleries and a gift shop allow a quick glance, or a self-paced in depth look, into Cleveland’s life, private, and political. Outside on the two-acre lawn, weather permitting, visitors are encouraged to try their hand at reproduction 1830s era lawn games. Admission is free, donations gladly accepted. For more details and hours, call 973-226-0001

David Chan Musical Director of the Montclair Orchestra

Article Submitted by Jessica Levin

The Montclair Orchestra recreates a musical experience spanning centuries .
Caldwell, NJ — The Grover Cleveland Memorial Association and The Montclair Orchestra present a once in a lifetime event, a reenactment of President Grover Cleveland’s 1893 inauguration, on November 10th at the Women’s Club of Upper Montclair.  The formal event benefiting both organizations honors the spirit of the original ball where Cleveland took office as the first and only President to serve a non-consecutive term.

Led by Music Director David Chan, The Montclair Orchestra will regale guests with a performance including selections from Mozart Symphony 29 and Grieg’s “Holberg” Suite.  Chan, the concertmaster of the renowned Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and his musicians will kick off the gala with a rendition of Hail to the Chief and other period pieces, played at the 1893 ball. Their music will also serve as the background for dancing during the night.

“Education is key to the mission of The Montclair Orchestra.  Partnering with The Grover Cleveland Memorial Association for a fundraiser that supports opportunities to learn while performing historical music is a win for us.  We appreciate the chance to be a part of this unique event,” noted Andre Weker, Executive Director of The Montclair Orchestra.

In addition to the musical component, a memorable culinary experience awaits guests. A carefully crafted menu has been designed to replicate the cuisine of the period. To top off the gastronomic gaiety, Chef and author Roland Mesnier will serve as auctioneer and keynote speaker.  Mesnier spent twenty-five years in the White House as Executive Pastry Chef, preparing French-inspired sweets for five US Presidents.  Joined on stage by John Elliott of CBS, Mesnier will delight attendees with humor and tales from the kitchen of the most famous house in the country. He has also graciously donated presidential memorabilia to fundraiser’s auction including a chef’s coat that bears the official White House seal.

Beyond the melodious performances and delicious delicacies, the event is truly about remembering history.  To tell the story properly, George Cleveland, grandson, and doppelganger of Grover assumes the role of the President. Miss New Jersey, Jaime Gialloreto will play first Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland.  Joining George will be his nephew and Grover Cleveland’s great-grandson US Ambassador Thomas Robertson IV as Vice President Adlai Stevenson. John Elliott’s wife, Mary Ellen, steps into the role of Mrs. Adlai Stevenson.

Relive the romance of the late 19th Century and support the Grover Cleveland Birthplace and The Montclair Orchestra and the education they provide. Purchase tickets for $300 per person or $500 for Patrons who receive a copy of Chef Mesnier’s book and preferred ballroom seating.  Sponsorship opportunities are also available, and all proceeds benefit the Grover Cleveland Birthplace and The Montclair Orchestra. To purchase tickets   Click Here or for more information call or contact 973-226-0001.

About the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association

The Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association (GCBMA) is a conservancy and advocacy group dedicated to preserving the home and legacy of President Cleveland, the only U.S. President born in New Jersey. Through volunteer-based initiatives, our goal is to increase awareness and support of the Grover Cleveland birthplace and its heritage. The GCBMA activities include fundraising in support of educational programs and lectures, interpretation and preservation of the birthplace and its collection of historic objects, and history-themed social activities which engage the public. Working in partnership with the State of New Jersey, we look forward to implementation of our plan to build a Visitor Center on site, providing state of the art space for educational and programming activities, as well as to display historically significant artifacts and exhibitions related to Grover Cleveland and his Presidency.

 About The Montclair Orchestra

The Montclair Orchestra is a unique training orchestra that offers fellowship playing positions to students from some of the most recognizable music schools in the world, including The Juilliard School, Cali School of Music, Mannes School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and Mason-Gross School for the Arts. Playing alongside the student fellows are professional ‘mentors’, including some of the world’s best orchestral musicians. Players from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St Luke’s, and other NYC-area orchestras play alongside the student fellows for an unforgettable experience for both musicians and audience. Leading the orchestra in its second season is Music Director David Chan, the concertmaster for the prestigious Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.