Happy birthday Grover Cleveland!

Is it weird to celebrate the birthday of a long dead president? Is it weirder when at best he’s America’s Most Average President?

Well... here we are: Happy Birthday to Grover Cleveland, born 182 years ago today, March 18, 1837.

Why should Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson get all the glory? That’s why we celebrate.

Stephen Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey. He was the fifth child born to Ann (Neal) Cleveland, and her husband Richard. Four more children would come later, making Stephen the middle child, fifth of the nine kids in the Cleveland household. 

His mother was from Baltimore, the daughter of a bookseller, and the descendant of Anglo-Irish Protestants and German Quakers from the Philadelphia area. 

His father was a Congregational and Presbyterian minister from Connecticut, whose family came from England in 1635 and whose grandfather fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the Revolutionary War. Go home redcoats!

The baby Cleveland was named Stephen Grover in honor of the same-named first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, where his father was currently serving.

The prank-loving child would go by Stephen for most his childhood, turning to Grover only as an adult.

Fun Fact: Martin Van Buren, the first man born an American citizen to become president, was inaugurated a few weeks before Grover was born. 

When Grover was 4, in 1841, the family moved from New Jersey to Fayetteville, New York, and then in 1850 they moved again to Clinton, New York, when he as 13.

The home in Caldwell where he was born is now the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Museum and is a National Historic Site. It’s the only house museum in America dedicated to Grover Cleveland. You can visit their website, and become a member, here: http://presidentcleveland.org/

So boss Steve Cleveland and I would have you raise a glass of beer, his favorite beverage, in his honor tonight. And then go to Instagram and follow our Grover Cleveland Art Appreciation Society, @groverclevelandartsociety

Three cheers! Here’s to Uncle Jumbo, the Veto King, our pal, the forgotten moderate, champion of the Gold Standard, the anti-imperialist, the most average president, our beloved non-consecutive executive, President Grover! Cheers!





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