Biography
John Coolidge, was born in Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, on September 7, 1906. He was the elder of the two children of Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933), the 30th President of the United States (1923–1929) and Grace Anna Goodhue (1879–1957), First Lady of the United States from 1923 to 1929. In his autobiography, Calvin Coolidge recorded his impressions of the birth of his first son: "The fragrance of the clematis which covered the bay window filled the room like a benediction where the mother lay with her baby. It was all very wonderful to us."
Coolidge attended Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania and graduated in 1924. He then enrolled at Amherst College, his father's alma mater, graduating in 1928.
On September 23, 1929 at Plainville, Connecticut, he married Florence Trumbull She was born on November 30, 1904, at Plainville, Connecticut, the daughter of Connecticut governor John H. Trumbull and Maud Pierce Usher. The Coolidges had two daughters, Cynthia Coolidge Jeter (1933–1989) and Lydia Coolidge Sayles. She died on February 15, 1998 at Plymouth Notch, Vermont.
He was an executive with the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. He served as president of the Connecticut Manifold Forms Company until 1960, when he reopened the Plymouth Cheese Corporation in Plymouth at the historic village. He helped start the Coolidge Foundation and his gifts of buildings, land, and artifacts were instrumental in creating the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site.
Well into his 80s, Coolidge was seen shuttling back and forth from his home near the Calvin Coolidge Historical Site to collect his mail at the old post office located on the historic site. He was reportedly a charming and excited talker who would still answer visitors' questions about his father or his family, and who would, on occasion, give a rare personal interview.
He died on May 31, 2000 at Lebanon, Grafton County, New Hampshire. He is buried beside his wife, parents, brother and several generations of the Coolidge family in the Plymouth Notch Cemetery at Plymouth, Windsor County, Vermont. He was survived by a daughter, son-in-law, three grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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