How Much Do You Know About the Presidential Children?

Harry and Bess Truman’s only child, Margaret, briefly set her sights on a singing career. But a 1950 performance at Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall resulted in bad reviews, particularly from the "Washington Post." A protective Truman famously sent an angry note in response, threatening to punch the critic. Cooler heads prevailed, but Margaret later abandoned her professional ambitions.

The wedding of Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower formally united two political families that had long been entwined. Richard Nixon was President Dwight Eisenhower’s Vice President, and Julie and David first met as children at the 1956 Republican National Convention. They reconnected when they were 19, and wed in 1968, just weeks after Richard Nixon was elected President.

Grover Cleveland is the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms in office and also the first and only one to have a child delivered in the White House. Esther Cleveland was his second daughter with wife Frances (who was herself the youngest First Lady). Esther was born in 1893, during her father’s second term, and later became a noted philanthropist.

George H.W. Bush made the Thanksgiving turkey pardon an official White House tradition, but the first unofficial turkey pardon traces back to 1863. By then, the Lincolns had already lost two sons, Eddie and Willie, and doted on their youngest, Thomas or “Tad.” When the family received a turkey for their Christmas meal, Tad adopted “Jack” as a pet, and successfully lobbied his father to issue a written card granting Jack a reprieve.

The White House has hosted18 official wedding ceremonies in its history, primarily for members of the first family or their closest friends and aides. The first White House wedding to include a President’s child was held in 1820, when James Monroe’s youngest child, Maria, married SamuelGouverneur, her cousin and Monroe’s private secretary.

Amy Carter was just nine years old when her parents moved to the White House. When she enrolled at the predominantly Black Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School, she became one of just a handful of first children to attend public school, including the youngest sons of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. No Presidents since Carter have enrolled their children in public school in Washington, D.C.

Teddy Roosevelt’s rambunctious brood of six children took Washington, D.C., by storm in 1901. Eldest daughter Alice and her siblings filled the White House with an array of animals, including a bear, a hyena, a badger, a barn owl, and more traditional pets such as snakes, lizards, pigs, birds, dogs, and horses. There are many stories, but the Roosevelt bunch once notably snuck Algonquin the pony onto a White House elevator to visit brother Archie in his sick bed in the West Wing.

Neil Diamond’s classic “Sweet Caroline” was released in 1969 and hit No. 4 on the Billboard charts, but until 2007, fans didn’t know that Caroline Kennedy was the song's namesake. That year, Diamond revealed that the Red Sox fan-favorite song was inspired by a magazine cover with a photo of young Caroline and her pony. As the story goes, he needed a three-syllable name to fit a song, and there was “Car-o-line” (bah-dah-dah).

Fraternal twins Jenna and Barbara Bush are children of one President (George W. Bush) and grandchildren of another (George H.W. Bush). As they shared in a joint memoir published in 2017, they sometimes came under intense scrutiny for doing things that would be considered normal for other people, like drinking in college. However, now they are grown up and have built successful careers — Jenna is an author and TV news journalist, and Barbara is CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps.

John Quincy Adams was the eldest son of President John Adams and Abigail Adams. He was an accomplished diplomat before being elected to one term as President in 1824. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush became the second father-son POTUS duo in 2000. Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt were fifth cousins, while Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison.