White House Observers
Complementing the division's presidential collections are the papers of White House staff members. Edith Benham Helm (1874-1962)
[catalog record] served as social secretary to Edith Bolling Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Bess Truman. Her papers (10,000 items; 1918-53)
relate mainly to White House social functions and to President Woodrow Wilson's trips to Europe for the Paris Peace Conference.
Victoria Henrietta Kugler Nesbitt (1874-1963) [catalog record] was a housekeeper for Franklin D. Roosevelt's family, and her collection (4,500 items; 1933-49) contains correspondence
(including some exchanged with Eleanor Roosevelt about domestic matters), manuscripts of her books White House Diary (1948) and The Presidential Cookbook (1951), and a nearly complete set of White House menus.
Women who wrote about the White House and its occupants include both Ruth Painter Randall (1892-1971), whose book Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage (1953) is represented in the papers of her husband, Civil War historian J. G. Randall (35,000 items; 1779-1970; bulk 1916-70)
[catalog record], and Mary S. Logan, wife of John Alexander Logan (see Congressional Collections).
Political correspondents Ruby A. Black (1896-1957), May Craig (1889?-1975), and Bess Furman (1894-1969) covered the White House, reporting particularly on Eleanor Roosevelt and other modern first ladies (see White House Journalists).
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