Last year on July 4, a friend posted that she was at President Calvin Coolidge’s grave site at the wreath laying ceremony for his birthday. I asked here where it was and she said “Plymouth Notch, Vermont.” I looked it up and found that Plymouth is a tiny town in the center of the state; not quite in the middle, but close.
In November, my husband and I were near by and went to visit. Although the museum and visitor center was closed, the grounds were open for walking and the Plymouth Cheese factory was in full operation. The views are lovely in all directions.
The Calvin Coolidge Homestead website begins the story this way
At 2:47am on August 3, 1923, Vice President Calvin Coolidge became the 30th president of the United States when he took the oath of office in the sitting room of this modest frame and clapboard farmhouse. President Harding had died only a few hours earlier. Coolidge’s father, a notary public, administered the oath by the light of a kerosene lamp; he refused to install such modern conveniences as electricity. Located in the tiny community of Plymouth Notch in the beautiful hill country of Vermont, the house where he took the oath of office was also Calvin Coolidge’s boyhood home.
Although he grew up in Plymouth, Coolidge left Vermont to study at Amherst College in Massachusetts and later settled in Northampton where he practiced law and got his start in politics. Coolidge was a Republican and notorious in Massachusetts for breaking up the Boston Police strike of 1919 when he was Governor. After he became President, he established the summer White House above the family store in Plymouth.
Coolidge served out Harding’s term and one term of his own before retiring to Northampton where he died suddenly in in 1933 at age 60. He is buried in the cemetery at Plymouth.
Photographs: Town of Plymouth; Vermont Division for Historic Preservation; and Seth Mussleman on Find-A Grave.