A List of Presidents’ Children Married While Their Father Was in Office

I’ve been getting quite a few calls from the media about the Jenna Bush wedding scheduled for May 10 and the general confusion regarding the number of presidential children married during their father’s time in office. This information can be very conflicting.  Some of this is caused by divorces that took place during the White House years.  For example, in the last years of his father’s administration, Elliot Roosevelt had yet another divorce and so some journalists placed his next wedding date that same year.  Something similar has happened in reference to Chip Carter.  Accounts have him remarrying in 1980.  Actually, he divorced that year and did not remarry until 1984, after the Carter family left Washington.

 

Journalists beware, there are even common mistakes about presidential children in the official records used by the White House office of protocol, prestigious reference books on the presidents and numerous Pulitzer Prize winning books.  When my White House Wedding Website first was moved last month we found numerous mistakes made by well intentioned staffers “correcting” copy with new information taken from the internet.

 

Below is my own list of such weddings.  It has been supplied to various journalists who requested it this past month.  Historians are welcome to weigh in on this.   

 

A list of 22 weddings of presidential offspring during their father’s presidency.  Jenna Bush will be 23.  Children married in the White House are in blue.  But whatever you write, be careful to distinquish between the number of weddings and the number of presidential kids married, Elliot was married twice.  So 22 weddings but 21 kids.  Got it?

 

Presidential child, date of wedding, groom.

 

Maria Hester Monroe	March 9, 1820	Samuel L. Gouverneur
John Adams	Feb. 25, 1828	Mary Catherine Hellen
Andrew Jackson Jr.	Nov. 24, 1831	Sarah Yorke
Abraham Van Buren	Nov. 27, 1838	Angelica Singleton
Elizabeth Tyler	Jan. 31, 1842	William Nevison Waller
Nellie Grant	May 21, 1874	Algernon Charles Satoris
Frederick Grant	Oct. 20, 1874	Ida Marie Honore
Alice Roosevelt	Feb. 17, 1906	Rep. Nicholas Longworth
Jessie Wilson	Nov. 25, 1913	Frances Bowes Sayre
Eleanor Wilson	May 7, 1914	William Gibbs McAdoo
Anna Roosevelt	Jan. 1935	John Boettiger
Elliot Roosevelt	July 22, 1933	Ruth Googins
FDR, Jr.	June 30, 1937	Ethel duPont
John Roosevelt	June 18, 1938	Anne Lindsay Clark
James Roosevelt	April 14, 1941	Romelle Schneider
Elliot Roosevelt Luci Baines Johnson	Dec. 3,1944 Aug. 6, 1966	Faye Emerson Patrick John Nugent
Lynda Bird Johnson	Dec. 9, 1967	Charles Spittal Robb
Tricia Nixon	June 12, 1971	Edward Ridley Finch Cox
Maureen Reagan Patti Davis Dorothy Walker Bush	April 25, 1981 Aug. 14, 1984 June 26, 1992	Dennis Revell Paul Grilley Robert Koch
Jenna Bush	May 10, 2008	Henry Hager

 

 

 

 

 

 

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