What celebrity looked like in 1888

Frances Folsom Cleveland in a photo
from 1886. Credit: Library of Congress

I can't let election season pass without writing about President Grover Cleveland's campaign visit to Florida in 1888. Or, more specifically, Mrs. Grover Cleveland's trip to Florida. The First Lady was the superstar of her time.

The nation's top newspapers all reported on the journey, according to Presidential Visits to Florida: Grover Cleveland 1888, an ebook by author Ray Osborne which I unearthed only in Google Books. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Harper's Weekly, among other publications, kept close tabs on the presidential entourage.

A good part of the interest focused on the president's wife, Frances Folsom Cleveland. She was young and fashionable and a major celebrity of her day. 

The newspapers "reported on his visit and with a fascination with his new young wife..." Osborne writes. She was so popular that young women nationwide copied her hairstyles, her clothing, and even the poses she used when being photographed, says the National First Ladies Library. In my second novel, Stitching A Life in Persimmon Hollow, my heroine is one of these awestruck young women who can't believe she might get to see the First Lady on the Florida tour. 

A 21-gun salute heralded the Clevelands as they made their way to the Sub-Tropical Exposition in Jacksonville that long-ago day in February 1888. Locals staged a parade, VIPS gave speeches, and a crowd of thousands showed its enthusiasm.

 "A perfect tempest of cheering and clapping hands erupted" when Mrs. Cleveland stepped to the podium upon the request of the crowd, Osborne notes. "Five thousand throats cheered and greeted her."

The Feb. 23, 1888 issue of the Palatka Daily News even quotes the First Lady in a sub-head. "Mrs. Cleveland says it is no wonder people flock down here every winter for our delightful climate," the paper proclaims. 

The article gushes, telling how she alighted from the train "with the gracefulness of a fawn," and making note of her "pretty sylphlike figure." I kid you not. Military guards were needed to keep back the hordes at the evening reception for the Clevelands at St. James Hotel.

The newspaper did include a reprint of the president's Exposition speech, and listings of every locally important person and organization participating in the day's events. A visit by a presidential couple was a big deal in that pre-everything era - no Internet, no social media, no video, no cell phones, no television, no radio, no endless loops of replays in countless media.

If you think about it, the First Lady's popularity was an amazing thing. It happened without all the tools that accompany celebrity status today. She was a brand before personal brands existed.

Campaigning through Florida, 1888 style

I'm watching every minute of Ken Burns' "The Roosevelts" and makes me wonder whether any U.S. presidents visited pioneer Florida while in office. My search - and the PBS series itself - notes the many times FDR visited Florida. His era is way outside the scope of this blog. I think most people know Teddy Roosevelt was in Tampa in 1898, getting ready to fight in the Spanish-American War. The Theodore Roosevelt Association says he and his wife, Edith, stayed at Tampa Bay Hotel while Teddy waited for orders to leave for Cuba. But he wasn't president at the time.

The hotel, by the way, is now part of the University of Tampa. You can still experience its turn-of-the-century grandeur by visiting the Henry B. Plant Museum inside the main building.

President and Mrs. Cleveland in Rockledge, Fla., 1888.
Credit: Florida Memory

Tampa hardly qualified as small-town frontier in 1898. Ten years earlier, though, the Brevard County settlement of Rockledge definitely did. That was the year President Grover Cleveland and his popular wife, Frances, visited the riverfront city. Rockledge had been incorporated only a year before, in 1887, according to Wikipedia.

In those days before Internet, movies, TV, or radio, a president and First Lady were bonafide celebrities. A visit by such a prominent couple would bring out an entire town.

Women couldn't vote for president in 1888 (not 'til 1920), but it's safe to assume that a good number of women in Rockledge wanted to see the young First Lady that day. She was popular throughout the nation. The National First Ladies' Library says American women copied her hairstyle, dress style, and even tried to mimic the way she posed in photos. The C-SPAN First Ladies Influence & Image series features a segment on her as a fashion icon. 

The trip to Rockledge was part of a campaign tour that also included stops in Winter Park, Jacksonville, Sanford, and other cities. Author and blogger Ray Osborne's ebook, President Cleveland's Florida Trip 1888, notes the media's fascination with Frances Cleveland. I found the book - and Osborne's history blog named Time Passages - while digging for information on the domestic details of that long-ago visit. I'll report back about the fashion and food after some more research. In the meantime, you can read what Osborne blogged about the trip. No such thing as too much history!