NEW ISSUE: White House History Quarterly Magazine "Memorials, Cemeteries, and White House History"

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The White House Historical Association will release the 77th issue of its award-winning magazine, White House History Quarterly: "Memorials, Cemeteries, and White House History." The pursuit of White House history has often taken the Quarterly to memorials and grave sites, but this issue is the first wholly devoted to exploring the White House history found in cemeteries.

Principal photographer Bruce White has spent two years on the hills and winding paths capturing the beauty of these final resting places and calls the experience "moving and poignant—looking at the memorials is like reading biographies in miniature and, in an odd twist, sometimes they tell us more about the people who erect them than the person who lies beneath."

"President Kennedy once observed that 'history sometimes seems to be too much a study of abstractions and phantoms' and that a visit to the White House reminds us that our presidents 'were real people who ate and slept and worked and suffered.' The same could be said about the extent to which our knowledge of White House history is enriched by visits to the grave sites of not only the presidents but also their loved ones, their neighbors, their friends and their enemies, and even the journalists and historians who documented their stories," explained Marcia Anderson, Editor of the Quarterly.

Articles in this issue include:

• Spending Eternity with the Executive Branch: White House Connections at Historic Congressional Cemetery — Rebecca Roberts opens the issue with a tour of Congressional Cemetery, established in 1807. Nearly every member of Congress who died in office in the early nineteenth century was either laid to rest here or remembered by the distinctive cube-shaped and domed cenotaphs found nowhere else. The remains of President John Quincy Adams and First Lady Dolley Madison were temporarily held in the Public Vault here before they were moved closer to home, while Dolley Madison's son Payne Todd is here yet.
   
• The Storied Paths of Oak Hill Cemetery — In Georgetown, across the city from Congressional Cemetery, Emily Guzick leads us through Oak Hill Cemetery, designed to embrace the natural landscape. Here we find the mausoleum that once held the son of President Abraham Lincoln, Willie Lincoln, who died in the White House. Among the many other graves with White House connections, we see the grand mausoleum of William Wilson Corcoran, the cross-topped monument to President Zachary Taylor's brother, Brigadier General Joseph Pannell Taylor, and the modest Seneca stone fragment that marks the recent burial of historian and author James Moore Goode.
   
• The White House and Arlington National Cemetery — Clifford Krainik takes us back to the Civil War, when the U.S. government seized Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Arlington estate on the banks of the Potomac River, transforming it by 1864 into a cemetery for the Union's war dead. Today Arlington National Cemetery holds more than 400,000 graves across 1,100 acres. Krainik highlights the burial sites of President John F. Kennedy and President William Howard Taft, as well as presidential son Robert Todd Lincoln and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
   
• From the Archives: President Herbert Hoover's Grave Site — Jessie Kratz takes us to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa, where President Hoover lies beneath a simple white marble slab of his own design, inspired by the Quaker ideal of austerity instilled in his upbringing.
   
• Eternal Rest on the Hills: Rock Creek and Mount Olivet Cemetery — Margaret Strolle continues the exploration of Washington, D.C., cemeteries with stops at Rock Creek and Mount Olivet. She highlights the burial site of the designer and builder of the White House, James Hoban, and, just a few steps away, that of Mary Surratt, who for her part in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln became the first woman executed by the federal government.
   
• A History Teacher's Fifty-Year Quest to visit every President's Grave — Russell Beckman recounts his fifty-year quest to visit the grave site of every U.S. president. As of May 2025, he has just one left (that of President Jimmy Carter) on this list. His presidential encounters from Vermont to California have inspired his life and reflect Americans' respect and affection for the men who have led the nation for more than two hundred years.
   
• Presidential Sites Feature Grant's Tomb and National Reconciliation — It was Union General Ulysses S. Grant who accepted the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox Court House in 1865, effectively ending the Civil War. Reflecting on Grant's legacy as a peacemaker and as the eighteenth president of the United States, Louis Picone takes us to the Grant National Memorial in New York City. Picone explains that the 150-foot-tall tomb was, and remains, the largest tomb in North America. In contrast, many presidential graves are quite simple.
   
• Reflections: The Tip of the Spear — Stewart D. McLaurin closes the issue at Old Calton Cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland. There he discovers a statue of Abraham Lincoln, erected in 1893 to honor the Scots who fought and died for the Union during the American Civil War.

This 92-page issue of White House History Quarterly retails for $12.95. To purchase a single issue, visit shop.whitehousehistory.org. 

To subscribe to White House History Quarterly, visit whitehousehistoryjournal.org.

About The White House Historical Association
First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy envisioned a restored White House that conveyed a sense of history through its decorative and fine arts. She sought to inspire Americans, especially children, to explore and engage with American history and its presidents. In 1961, the nonprofit, nonpartisan White House Historical Association was established to support her vision to preserve and share the Executive Mansion's legacy for generations to come. Supported entirely by private resources, the Association's mission is to assist in the preservation of the state and public rooms, fund acquisitions for the White House permanent collection, and educate the public on the history of the White House. Since its founding, the Association has given more than $115 million to the White House in fulfillment of its mission. To learn more about the White House Historical Association, please visit WhiteHouseHistory.org. 

SOURCE The White House Historical Association