The W.T. Marshall Collection
Trained as a bookbinder and cataloger, Tom Marshall worked for the U.S. Government Printing Office. In 1899, the GPO loaned him to the White House where he remained for thirty-eight years, serving as a clerk and personal librarian for presidential administrations from William McKinley through Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Donated by his daughter Violet Marshall Douglas of Oxford, Mississippi, the Marshall Collection contains books, photographs, invitations, and other White House ephemera – many of which Marshall saved from discard piles.
Click here for collection finding aid
William McKinley (1897-1901)
Four months after the White House dinner honoring the President of the Republic of Hawaii, the United States annexed the islands as a U.S. Territory. American expansionism during McKinley’s administration also contributed to the Spanish-American War of 1898. A photograph captures the president’s visit to Camp Meade in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, established to house volunteer forces.
An anarchist shot McKinley during a visit to the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. The president died eight days later of complications. On display is a pen holder and case used by McKinley prior to his death.
Click thumbnail to view larger image
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
Roosevelt organized and led the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, otherwise known as the “Rough Riders.” He returned from the Spanish-American War as a hero, and voters subsequently elected him governor of New York. Pasted into one of Marshall’s souvenir albums is an 1899 handwritten note by Roosevelt requesting Adjutant General Avery D. Andrews to “Please come with-out fail to Oyster Bay Monday with all possible information about officers of New York volunteer regiments in Spanish War. Need it at once.” At the time, Roosevelt was considering his prospects for a Vice Presidential nomination in 1900.
Oyster Bay on Long Island was the site of Roosevelt’s home Sagamore Hill. During his presidency, it was referred to as the “Summer White House.” Depicting a social event there in September 1908, the photograph album is open to a page showing President and Mrs. Roosevelt in a receiving line.
In an album containing signatures of noted White House visitors like Admiral George Dewey, Alexander Graham Bell, and Mark Twain, Marshall also collected autographs from the entire Roosevelt family, including six-year-old Quentin.
Click thumbnail to view larger image
William H. Taft (1909-1913)
Taft became the first president to openly and often play golf, even participating in a number of exhibition games. The second photograph captures Taft at an occasion commemorating the 120th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration.
In addition to an inscribed copy of Taft’s Presidential Addresses and State Papers (1910), the Marshall Collection possesses a Taft presidential bookplate designed in 1909.
Click thumbnail to view larger image
Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Louise Axson Wilson died of kidney disease in the fall of 1914. Less than a year later, the president met and married Washington DC widow Edith Bolling Galt, stating “in this place time is not measured by weeks, or months, or years, but by deep human experience.”
Click thumbnail to view larger image
Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
Coolidge assumed the presidency following the death of Warren G. Harding while on a tour of the western United States. He won election in his own right in 1924 – the year Charles Scribner’s Sons published a collection of Coolidge’s speeches entitled The Price of Freedom.
Click thumbnail to view larger image
Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
The Marshall Collection includes two Christmas greetings from the Hoover White House. First Lady Lou Henry Hoover oversaw the decoration of the first official White House Christmas tree in 1929.
Click thumbnail to view larger image
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945)
Among the presidential documents saved by Marshall is this handwritten note by Roosevelt asking the Secretary of State to convey to the Austrian government “my deep horror and regret on hearing the news of the murder of Chancellor Dolfuss.” In 1934, Austrian Nazis had failed in an attempted coup d’etat, although they succeeded in their assassination of Dolfuss.
Written at the beginning of his first administration, Looking Forward (1933) and On Our Way (1934) outline the president’s plan for national economic recovery from the Great Depression.
Click thumbnail to view larger image
Return to the top
