President and Mrs. Coolidge attend Thanksgiving Day service In Virginia. In Virginia for an old-fashioned Thanksgiving, President and Mrs. Coolidge attended Thanksgiving Day services at the First Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. In the photograph, left to right: Governor Angus McLean of North Carolina; President Coolidge; Mrs. Coolidge; Governor Harry Byrd of Virginia; Reverend George L. Petrie of the Charlottesville Ministerial Associate; and Reverend J.W. Moore, Pastor of the First Baptist Church

John Calvin Coolidge Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was the 30th President of the United States (1923–29). He was elected as the 29th vice president in 1920 and succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Born in Plymouth, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, Coolidge was the son of a village storekeeper. He was graduated from Amherst College with honors and started his political career as a councilman in Northampton, Massachusetts, and became Governor of Massachusetts, as a Republican. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative, and also as a man who said very little, although having a rather dry sense of humor. Coolidge was a popular figure and restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration. He left office with considerable popularity amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying during the 1920s era. Coolidge was both the most negative and remote of Presidents, and the most accessible. He once explained to Bernard Baruch why he often sat silently through interviews: "Well, Baruch, many times I say only 'yes' or 'no' to people. Even that is too much. It winds them up for twenty minutes more."

America’s Richest Families, 1900-1940