Vice President Calvin Coolidge was visiting his father in Vermont when they received word in the middle of the night that President Warren G. Harding had died. Coolidge’s father, a notary public, swore him in as president by the light of a kerosene lantern.

Coolidge, a former Massachusetts governor, tried to make the transition to the presidency as smooth as possible. A vibrant economy helped him win the election in his own right when he ran in 1924.

As president, Coolidge saw the enactment of a law that limited the number of immigrants to the United States through a national “origins quota,” as well as an air commerce act that established federal air traffic regulations. His administration was colored by personal tragedy when in 1924, sixteen-year-old Cal Jr. died unexpectedly of a blood infection. “The power and the glory of the presidency went with him,” Coolidge later wrote.

Coolidge declined to run in the 1928 presidential race, retiring to their home in Massachusetts. In 1929, the stock market collapsed and the Great Depression ensued. A few days after the New Year in 1933, Mrs. Coolidge found the former president dead from a heart attack. He was 60.