The day a U.S. president was sworn in—at 2:47 a.m.

A Telegram in the Night

At 2:30 a.m. on August 3, 1923, a Western Union messenger arrived at the Coolidge Homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, carrying a telegram from San Francisco. Vice President Calvin Coolidge, visiting his childhood home, learned that President Warren G. Harding had died of a heart attack. The farmhouse had no electricity and no telephone. Coolidge dressed by kerosene lamp while his father, Colonel John Coolidge, a notary public and justice of the peace, searched for the presidential oath in an old copy of the U.S. Constitution. A small group assembled in the sitting room: Coolidge's wife Grace, his father, a stenographer, a congressman, and Coolidge's chauffeur. At 2:47 a.m., by the light of a kerosene lamp on a marble-topped table, John Coolidge administered the oath to his son. It was the only time in American history a father swore in his own child as president.

The Constitutional Question

The oath itself raised immediate legal concerns. John Coolidge held state authority as a Vermont notary and justice of the peace, but the presidential oath is a federal matter, and no statute explicitly authorized a state official to administer it. Coolidge's attorney general, Harry Daugherty, quietly advised the new president that the oath might not be legally binding. On August 21, 1923, Coolidge retook the oath in his suite at the Willard Hotel in Washington, this time administered by Justice Adolph Hoyt of the District of Columbia Supreme Court. No reporters were present, and the White House did not announce the second ceremony for several days. Coolidge never publicly explained the reason, and historians did not confirm the dual oath until decades later when the White House logs were examined. The Vermont oath remained the official version in all contemporary accounts, and Coolidge's presidency is dated from that moment.

The Lamp, the Bible, and the Room

The objects in the room that night have become American relics. The kerosene lamp, a simple pressed-glass model with a metal burner, is displayed at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site in Plymouth Notch, along with the marble-topped table and the family Bible opened to the Book of John. The sitting room itself has been preserved exactly as it appeared in 1923, down to the wallpaper and the wood stove. Colonel John Coolidge, then 78 years old, died the following year and never spoke publicly about the oath. Grace Coolidge later recalled that her husband's first words after the ceremony were, "I believe I can swing it." The stenographer, Erwin Geiser, took notes that were immediately sealed and not released until 1960. The scene has been recreated in paintings, films, and historical reenactments, cementing it as one of the most intimate moments in presidential history.

Why the Midnight Oath Still Matters

The Coolidge oath remains the last presidential inauguration conducted in a private home and the only one to occur in the middle of the night. It was also the last to take place without radio, cameras, or any live witnesses beyond a handful of people in the room. The constitutional ambiguity surrounding the oath has never been formally resolved, and legal scholars still debate whether a state official can administer the federal oath in an emergency. The Coolidge precedent has been cited in discussions of presidential succession during modern crises, including after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981. The Vermont farmhouse, which had no running water and no electricity in 1923, is now a National Historic Landmark, visited by thousands of tourists each year who stand in the same sitting room where a president was sworn in by lamplight at 2:47 in the morning.