ABSTRACT
Grace Anna Goodhue was born in Burlington, Vermont, on January 3, 1879, to Lemira Barrett Goodhue and Andrew Issachar Goodhue. Her father, known locally as “Captain” Goodhue, was a mechanical engineer appointed steamboat inspector for the Champlain Transport Company by President Grover Cleveland in 1886. The Goodhues were an old New England family established eight generations earlier by William Goodhue, who had immigrated to the New World from England in 163 5. One descendant was a member of the first U.S. Congress in 1797. Another sailed with Sir John Franklin in 1845 to explore the Arctic Ocean-an expedition on which all had perished. Grace wrote that when she went to live in the White House, she “found in the President's study an oak desk made from the timbers of the ship on which my kinsman had sailed and presented to the government by Queen Victoria in appreciation of the American expedition sent to rescue the Franklin party.”
