Born Buffalo, New York 1885–1886
When bachelor Grover Cleveland assumed the presidency for the first time in 1885, he asked his unmarried sister, Rose Elizabeth “Libby” Cleveland, to serve as White House hostess. After her brother’s marriage to Frances Folsom, she chose to pursue writing. Cleveland’s first novel, The Long Run, was published in 1886.
In the winter of 1889–90, Rose Cleveland began a relationship with Evangeline Marrs Simpson, a wealthy married woman who eventually became her life partner. Following the death of Simpson’s second husband, the two women made a home in the village of Bagni di Lucca, in the Tuscany region of Italy. They remained together until November 1918, when Rose Cleveland succumbed to the Spanish flu.
This portrait of Rose Cleveland was made by John Chester Buttre, who produced many elegant stipple and line engravings of first ladies, including Martha Washington, Harriet Lane Johnston, and Lucretia Garfield.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution