Whose you're Daddy.......Presidential Fathers

Grover Cleveland was the second Bachelor President but unlike James Buchanan he was interested in the opposite sex. So interested that he was well known as a cocksman and sexual innovator having been widely reputed as being the person who invented the Cleveland Steamer. His outré sexual proclivities did not catch up to him until the fatal day when he was involved in an orgy with a young tavern wench Maria Crofts Halpin. When the buxom waitress was found to be with child Grover stepped up and accepted financial responsibility as he was the only single man involved and the others would have to inform their wives. The suspicion was always that his law partner Oscar Folsom was the real father since the woman named the child after him. This unfortunate occurrence became the major issue in the campaign of 1884. However some good did come of it. While negotiating this settlement Cleveland became aware of Folsom’s young daughter Frances. Being a friend and associate of English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson the stalwart yet priapic Democratic politician often went on trips to exotic locales on Dodgson’s private yacht the Good Ship Lollypop to his private Caribbean Island where they enjoyed the company of very young girls. Cleveland made a deal in which he would pay for the bastard but would be able to marry young Frances as soon as was socially acceptable. She was small and slight and would retain her child like appearance for the rest of her life. They were married in the White House when she was twenty one years old and they subsequently had five children.  All of who learned one key sentence as the first words they could utter: “Ma Ma where’s my Pa?”

(Whose You’re Daddy, Presidential Fathers, Doris Kearns Godwin, Bantam Books, 1998)