It seems most everyone in Cazenovia knows that at one point in the village’s history President Grover Cleveland came here for a brief visit in 1887. Some people even know that President and Mrs. Cleveland held a reception at Lorenzo and spent the night there. Other than those few details, the visit of a sitting U.S. president to the small Cazenovia community appears to be relatively unknown but, at the time, it was one of the biggest events to ever happen to this small village.

Stephen “Big Steve” Grover Cleveland lived in Fayetteville with his family from 1841 to 1850, when he was ages four to 13. He returned for two years from ages 15 to 17 to work as a store clerk. He settled as an adult in Buffalo, where he practiced law. In 1863 he was drafted to serve in the Civil War but chose to hire a substitute instead so he could continue to work and support his family.

As a politician, “Big Steve” (who weighed over 250 pounds), a Democrat, was elected a city ward supervisor in Buffalo and became assistant district attorney for Erie County. In 1870, Cleveland was elected sheriff of Erie County and in 1881, at the age of 44, he was elected mayor of Buffalo. Cleveland was a reformer who believed in hard work, merit and efficiency. As mayor he exposed graft and corruption in the city’s municipal services, vetoed dozens of pork-barrel appropriations and earned a reputation as a hard and efficient worker.

Only one year after becoming mayor, Democrats named him as their candidate for governor, a position he won in 1882. He carried his political philosophy of honesty, hard work and reform to Albany, where he was given the nickname “Governor Veto” because of all the special privilege and pork barrel legislation he rejected. Less than two years after being elected to lead his state, he became the first Democrat since 1856 to be elected to the presidency.

The main political questions during Cleveland’s time as president centered mainly on contemporary issues such as monetary policy (whether the U.S. should be on the gold standard or the silver standard), tariff policy, Chinese immigration and race relations in the south (where he opposed racial integration of schools). During his second term he had to deal with the economic depression of 1893. As president, Cleveland’s greatest successes are considered to be his forceful championing of civil service and ethics reform in government, and the executive power he restored to what had become a weak presidential office subservient to the Congress.

Of course, Cleveland is best known today as the president with the strange name (Grover) and for being the only president in American history to be elected to two non-consecutive terms (1884-88 and 1892-96).

Cleveland’s visit to Cazenovia

When President Cleveland visited Cazenovia in 1887 he was 50 years old, in the middle of the first term in the White House and a newlywed. Cleveland married Frances Folsom, age 21, in 1886 — the first president ever to marry in the White House. During the summer of 1887, the couple took their honeymoon as a trip touring the western and southern states of the Union, during which they stopped in Upstate New York specifically to visit the village of Clinton, where the president spent some of his childhood, and which was celebrating its centennial. The Clevelands’ trip to Clinton ultimately was updated to include a visit to his childhood home of Fayetteville during which the president’s secretary of the treasury, Charles Fairchild, invited the Clevelands to stay overnight at his wife’s family home, Lorenzo, in the village of Cazenovia.

The story of Cleveland’s visit to Cazenovia is extensively detailed in multiple primary sources, including the Cazenovia, Fayetteville and Syracuse newspapers and the diary of 21-year-old Mary Fitzhugh Ledyard, a cousin of Mrs. Helen Lincklaen Fairchild who was present for the president’s entire visit.

Notices were published in the July 14 issue of the Cazenovia Republican announcing the president’s visit, encouraging village residents to keep the streets clean, to hang bunting and decorations on their homes and to participate in the planned lake fete. There was also a notice from Mrs. Ledyard Lincklaen inviting residents to attend the public reception for the Clevelands at Lorenzo from 4 to 6 p.m. on July 18.

According to newspaper coverage of the event, the village was patriotically decorated as never before, with many villagers starting the process as much as a week before the president’s arrival. “Politics and party lines, for the nonce, were entirely obliterated and each vied with another in their endeavors to honor such distinguished guests,” according to the Republican.

The presidential party arrived in Cazenovia at 11:30 a.m., Monday, July 18, where it was greeted by Secretary and Mrs. Fairchild, President of the Village L.W. Ledyard, the village trustees, a procession of village officials, fire and police officers, the Canastota band, and scores of local residents from all walks of life. When they emerged from the train, the president wore a black suit, black necktie and a tall white hat, while his wife wore a silk traveling dress of “quiet colors” under a black cloak. Instead of loud and raucous cheers when the presidential party arrived, the crowd was quiet, subdued and respectful. As the grand procession of carriages and people moved from the train station, up William Street to Lincklaen Avenue, to Albany Street to Lorenzo, still village residents welcomed the president with solemn dignity.

“The streets were thronged, but there was little applause, the populace demonstrating their respect by removing their hats. The president bowed right and left, and occasionally removed his hat to a group of ladies,” according to the Republican.

The Clevelands and the Fairchilds drove straight to Lorenzo, where they were greeted by Mrs. Ledyard Lincklaen, treated to lunch and then relaxed briefly in the mansion garden before the public reception. During this time, Lizzie Ledyard presented Mrs. Cleveland with a George Washington cup and saucer in a case made from the wood of the tree under which Cazenovia founder John Lincklaen pitched his tent. “Mrs. Cleveland expressed delight at the gift and declared she would always treasure it,” according to the Republican. The president was given the bedroom in the front of the house as his chamber, which overlooked the vast front lawn and grand view of Cazenovia Lake.

The New York Times correspondent, in describing Lorenzo (which he mistakenly called “Lincklaen”) for his readers wrote, “Its broad acres of lawn, its magnificent garden, containing rare and beautiful flowers and trees and shaded walks, make it one of the most picturesque spots in one of the prettiest village throughout the length and breadth of the Empire State.” He continued: “Of Lincklaen, the beautiful home of Secretary and Mrs. Fairchild, the president and Mrs. Cleveland cannot say enough in praise. Its history is the history of the village of Cazenovia.”

The public reception was unlike anything ever seen before in Cazenovia. The Republican reported that thousands of villagers and visitor began crowding around the Lorenzo grounds, sitting on the stone perimeter wall two hours before the reception began. So many people had descended on the village to see the president that the newspaper stated, “Cazenovia seemed a miniature metropolis.”

During the public reception, the president, Mrs. Cleveland and Mrs. Fairchild stood in line in the hallway and greeted visitors as they came in through the front door and made their way through the house and out the back into the garden. A special police force was stationed at the front door of Lorenzo to hold back a rush from the mob and prevent the president and first lady from being crushed to death. The visitor entered the mansion at about 25 per minute, and the president greeted everybody with a handshake and a “How do you do!” according to the Republican.

According to Mary Ledyard in her diary, four thousand people greeted the president and went through Lorenzo in two hours. “I never thought to see such a mob as infested Aunt Lincklaen’s well-ordered grounds and fought for admittance at her door step. The jam about the piazza was terrible and several women fainted. … and by six o’clock the president and Mrs. Cleveland seemed quite exhausted,” Ledyard wrote.

The presidential party ate dinner at Lorenzo that evening, and then witnessed the grand lake fete from the grounds of the Owaghena Club. According to the Fayetteville Weekly Recorder, the evening included “a magnificent display of fireworks on the lake which resembled a scene from a fairy land. A fleet of 100 boats illuminated by Japanese lanterns, rafts with Greek fire, bonfires along the lakeshore, sky rockets, etc., etc., made the lake a scene of beauty and grandeur seldom witnessed.”

On Tuesday, July 19, President and Mrs. Grover Cleveland returned to Cazenovia after a day in Fayetteville and had tea at Lorenzo, the home of Mrs. Ledyard Linckalen, before they left on their train to return to Washington, D.C. As they relaxed in the Lorenzo garden, the president helped transplant a young white pine tree from the woods around Lorenzo into the garden behind the house at the request of Mrs. Ledyard Lincklaen, “a venerable lady of almost 70 years,” according to a report by the New York Times.

“Little George Ledyard, a lad of 11 years, the grandson of Mrs. Lincklaen, helped them as they tucked away its roots in the ground,” stated the story.

Mary Ledyard’s diary contains a more honest assessment of the event, stating that “little George” helped the president plant a tree “and was not at all overcome by the honor.”

Shortly after the president’s visit, Mrs. Lincklaen had the “Grover Cleveland Tree,” as it subsequently became known, transplanted from the back garden into the woods on the western side of the mansion, and a memorial stone marker placed next to it. The tree has grown there ever since, and stands there to this day.

Interestingly, in 1972 it was thought that the tree was no longer there, having been blown down in a hurricane about 1955. On Oct. 11, 1972, The Cazenovia Republican published an article stating that the tree was in fact still alive and on the Lorenzo property, and quoted Mrs. Arthur Diefendorf, of Lincklaen Street, who said the late George Ledyard had shown her and her husband the tree in 1966. Next to the article was published a photo of the Grover Cleveland Tree under the headline, “We Found It!” The caption read that Lorenzo caretaker Benton Block had showed the tree to the editor of the Republican.

Visit to Fayetteville

The next morning, the president and his wife traveled nearly two hours by carriage down East Lake Road, onto the Seneca Turnpike (now Route 173) and down Salt Springs Road to Fayetteville, where the president visited his childhood home, lunched with his sister Mary Hoyt at her home on the corner of Elm and Manlius streets, and was honored by that village with decorations, cheers and adulating crowds. The speeches and public reception that afternoon occurred in Clinton Park, where the president was addressed by boyhood friends and shook hands for almost two hours, going at a rate of 44 people per minute, according to Fayetteville Village Historian Barbara S. Rivette, author of the booklet, Grover Cleveland: Fayetteville’s Hometown Boy.

Although the president did not give a speech, he gave a few brief remarks, during which recalled childhood scenes and friends and marveled at the changes to the village. “All of these memories have gone with me through my life,” he said.

The president left Fayetteville at around 3 p.m. to drive back to Cazenovia to catch the train to Washington. This time the party’s route took them through the village of Manlius, where the president stopped and gave a short speech.

“I have been more affected by the receptions of the past few days than by all other receptions that have been tendered me put together,” he said. “This has been one of the pleasantest days of my life. Now that I must leave, on finding that I must again go to my official duties, I do it with the greatest regret, for I would linger long among these scenes from my boyhood. I hope in days to come to see you often, and I promise that I shall hereafter be a more dutiful on to Fayetteville and to Manlius.”

The presidential party then continued on their drive to Cazenovia, which they reached at about 5 p.m. At 6:30p.m., after tea, they boarded the train at the Cazenovia station which took them back to Washington D.C.

Leavetaking and legacy

The New York Times correspondent wrote, “It was with regret that the party said goodbye to the secretary’s home and turned their faces toward Washington.”

In her diary, Mary Ledyard declared the visit a success, and stated that the president “came and saw and conquered — that is Mrs. Cleveland did for she took all hearts by storm.”

The Cazenovia Republican stated that the president’s visit was “a day long to be remembered” in the village, while Village President Ledyard issued a thank you notice to the residents for making the presidential visit so successful.

“The visit of so many famous persons is an event of unusual interest, and only such a combined effort as marked the occasion would have made it so agreeable to all,” Ledyard wrote. “Too much cannot be said in praise of the extreme quiet and uniform courtesy that characterized residents and strangers, and it is a proud record that no arrests were made for any disorder or intoxication in a vast crowd of people.”

President and Mrs. Cleveland never again visited Cazenovia, as far as is known, although reprints and summaries of reports of the presidential visit of 1887 have been constantly printed in the Cazenovia Republican for more than 100 years. In 1937 — the 50th anniversary of the visit — the Republican printed a front page story about it; in 1987, the centennial of the event, more stories were printed in local newspapers and the village of Fayetteville hosted a reenactment.

The Clevelands’ visit remains one of the seminal moments in the history of Cazenovia village, and is also one of the major talking points during guided tours of Lorenzo State Historic Site. While Cazenovia has seen another president visit in recent years (Bill Clinton), a U.S. Senator (Hillary Clinton) and just last month the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (John Boehner), modern-day security is so stringent that the people of the village will never again be able to shake hands with and speak to a sitting U.S. president the way they did on that summer day in July 1887.

Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached at editor@cazenoviarepublican.