President Grover Cleveland & Frances Folsom

Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms, taking office first in 1885 and again in 1893. A reform Democrat from Buffalo who had been mayor of that city and governor of New York, he built his reputation on honesty, civil-service reform, opposition to high tariffs, and a stubborn vetoing of what he regarded as raids on the federal treasury — the very temperament Richard Watson Gilder championed in the pages of The Century.

Frances Folsom Cleveland (1864–1947), married to the president in the Blue Room of the White House in 1886 at the age of twenty-one, was the youngest First Lady in American history and one of the most beloved. After the president's death she became a leading figure in education and women's civic life, serving on the board of the Women's University Club and Princeton-Plainsboro institutions.

The Gilders' friendship with the Clevelands was deep and constant. Richard Watson Gilder edited Cleveland's posthumous Presidential Problems and stood as one of his closest counselors; the Clevelands were frequent guests at Four Brooks Farm in Tyringham, and Frances continued to write affectionately to Helena de Kay Gilder long after the president's death — letters that survive among the most touching documents in the Four Brooks Farm archive.