Rose Cleveland

Life & Legacy

Rose Elizabeth Cleveland (June 13, 1846 – November 22, 1918) was an American author and lecturer. She was acting First Lady of the United States from 1885 to 1886, during the presidency of her brother, Grover Cleveland, who married in 1886.
Receiving an advanced education in her youth, Cleveland defied gender norms and pursued a career in a variety of literary and academic positions. When her unmarried brother was elected president, she acted in the role of first lady until his marriage to Frances Folsom. She used the role of first lady to galvanize support for women's suffrage, expressing little interest in more typical household management tasks.
After leaving the White House, Cleveland wrote several fiction and nonfiction works, many relating to women's rights. She was editor of a literary magazine for several months, and she continued teaching and lecturing. She met Evangeline Marrs Simpson in 1889, and the two became romantic partners, interrupted for several years by Simpson's marriage to Henry Benjamin Whipple. After reuniting, they moved to Italy in 1910, where Cleveland spent her final years helping war refugees during World War I and then Spanish flu patients, before contracting the disease herself and dying in 1918.