Program

NYS Historic

Subject

House, People, Site

Location

Lat/Long

,

Grant Recipient

Clinton Historical Society

Grover Cleveland, the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States is probably most famous today for the fact that he was the first American president to serve two non-consecutive terms. It was during the second of these terms that he paid a visit to Clinton, New York, a village southwest of Utica, in honor of its centennial on July 13, 1887.

While he was born in New Jersey, Cleveland spent much of his childhood in Upstate New York, including in Clinton, where he attended school as a teenager. The centennial celebrations gave him an opportunity to visit his former home, and as part of the day’s program, he, along with local ministers and representatives from Hamilton College, addressed the public. In his speech, the president reminisced about the time he had called Clinton home and his experiences as a young pupil. He recalled his struggles reading Vergil’s Aeneid in Latin using his father’s hand-me-down copy without notes while his classmates, one of whom also delivered a speech that day, refused to lend their modern editions to him. Despite these troubles, he made a point of emphasizing he happiness he felt when he thought of his time in Clinton, as it was before his father’s death when his whole family lived together.

As of 2026, the house Cleveland once called home was still standing.