A Note on My Harding Research

The information I posted during 2020 mostly covered Warren Harding's front-porch campaign from his home on Mt. Vernon Avenue in Marion, Ohio. The campaign officially started on July 31, 1920, and ended on September 25. The plan was to post daily on events that occurred exactly 100 years ago that day, but I shared other information as well. You'll have to read bottom-to-top if you want to follow the campaign from Day 1.

I used the open web for some of my research but also information accessible by using my library card or my subscription to www.newspapers.com. The most useful resource was the Marion Star, which was owned by the Hardings at the time of the campaign. I also browsed online copies of other newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Star, and the Dayton Daily News, which, in 1920, was owned by Harding's Democratic opponent, Governor James M. Cox. I also posted information from other newspapers that covered Harding's trips away from Marion during the campaign.

Another great resource I used was Dale E. Cottrill's The Conciliator, a 1969 biography of the president that expanded an earlier bibliography of Harding's speeches. An online version is available at the Internet Archive, but I used a hard copy borrowed from the State Library of Ohio.

Readers should not construe anything posted here as a political statement on my part. I just like Harding as a historical topic.

7/01/2020

Thursday, July 1, 1920

Senator Harding had returned to Washington from Chicago the day after he received the Republican nomination, arriving in the capital just after midnight, Monday, June 14. Since then, he's been greeting callers and responding to his correspondence, sometime late into the evening at the Hardings' home on Wyoming Avenue.

Yesterday, June 30, he had breakfast with Governor Calvin Coolidge, his running mate, who traveled from Massachusetts the night before. It was the first time the two had met since the national convention. After breakfast, the Republican ticket, Harding's wife Florence, and Will Hays, the chair of the Republican National Committee, posed for photos and newsreels.


Back in Marion, the Harding homecoming is expected to draw 25,000 people, the nomination ceremonies 100,000. Members of the Marion Civic Association – "restaurant, hotel and confectionery owners, bakers, wholesale grocers, butchers, and representatives of churches and lodges" – hold a planning meeting: "We want the people who come here to feel that they are going to have something to eat. The first big day will be July 5 and if we cannot accommodate them it will mean that people will not come later." It is reported that "the committee has called upon every good housewife to bake five extra loaves of bread, make a pail of coffee and to boil a ham along about July 22 so that the visitors may be assured of getting some sustenance while they are in town."

An Interesting Link:


The home in which the Hardings lived from 1917 to 1921 (which can be seen in the image above) still stands in Washington, D.C. Here's a recent photo, although in the alternate history provided on the page, Harding didn't actually die in office.

Source:
  • "Fully 100,000 in City for Notification Day." Marion Star. 2 July 1920.
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