The 2025 National History Day (NHD) theme is Rights and Responsibilities. The White House Historical Association offers a variety of resources to assist students working on NHD projects.
The State Dining Room, which now seats as many as 140 guests, was originally much smaller and served at various times as a drawing room, office, and Cabinet Room. Today's State Dining Room incorporates the space that President Thomas Jefferson used as a private office. Tall and generously proportioned, the room had fireplaces on the east and west and was flooded
Horace Vose (1840-1913) the Poultry King from Westerly on Rhode Islands southwestern shore, was a national figure in the late 19th and early 20th century, known as the man who annually provided the finest turkeys in the land for the first families Thanksgiving and Christmas table. Vose began raising turkeys with his uncle in the mid-1850s and in 1873 sent
Theodore Roosevelt became president after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The early months of his administration were a tense period of trial and error as Roosevelt had not been elected president. Fond of dinners as a means of entertaining, the Roosevelts held them nearly every night over the last few months of 1901 and constructed the guest lists with
"Largely through television," notes historian William Seale, the White House "is the best known house in the world, the instantly familiar symbol of the Presidency, flashed daily on millions and millions of TV screens everywhere."1J. B. West was Assistant Chief Usher at the White House from 1941 to 1957, and Chief Usher from 1957 to 1969. During the Eisenhower administration, West had an
This event will be held at the White House Historical Association. Arrive at the entrance at 748 Jackson Place, NW, Washington, D.C. for the symposium on May 4, 2017.
May 4 Program
8:30am - 9:15am
Registration and light French breakfast in Decatur House9:15am - 9:30am
Break and transition to Carriage House9:30am - 9:45am
WelcomeThe Honorable Frederick J. Ryan, Jr., Chairman of
Barnes, Peter W. and Cheryl Shaw Barnes. Woodrow the White House Mouse. Washington, D.C.: Little Patriot Press, 2012.Using rhymes and colorful illustrations, this book teaches children about the Executive Mansion and the presidency from the perspective of Woodrow G. Washingtail, the White House mouse. Bateman, Teresa. Red, White, Blue, and Uncle Who?: The Stories of America’s Patriotic Symbols. Ne
Abigail Powers was born in Saratoga County, New York, on March 13, 1798, while it was still a frontier out-post. Her father, a locally prominent Baptist preacher named Lemuel Powers, died shortly thereafter. Courageously, her mother, Abigail, moved on westward, thinking her scanty funds would go further in a less settled region, and ably educated her small son and daughter beyond the
Nancy Davis (Anne Frances Robbins) was born on July 6, 1921, in New York City. Her parents, Kenneth Robbins and Edith Luckett, separated after their daughter’s birth. Anne was sent to live with Edith’s sister, Virginia Gailbraith, and her husband Audley for the next six years. After Edith married Loyal Edward Davis in 1929, she and Anne reunited in Chicago, Illinois. Anne
As “the only unusual incident” of her girlhood, “Nellie” Herron Taft recalled her visit to the White House at 17 as the guest of President and Mrs. Hayes, intimate friends of her parents. Fourth child of Harriet Collins and John W. Herron, born in 1861, she had grown up in Cincinnati, Ohio, attending a private school in the city and studying music with ent
Ida Saxton was born in Canton, Ohio, on June 8, 1847, to James Saxton and Katherine DeWalt. James A. Saxton, a banker, was indulgent to his two daughters. He educated them well in local schools and a finishing school, and then sent them to Europe on the grand tour.
As a young woman, she worked in her father's bank. As a cashier