John Calvin Coolidge, Sr.

John Calvin Coolidge Sr. was born in Plymouth, Vermont, on March 31, 1845. His parents were Calvin Galusha Coolidge and Sarah Coolidge. He was educated at Black River Academy. During the American Civil War, he served as the commander of Company K, 10th Regiment of the Vermont militia, holding the rank of captain.

Coolidge engaged in various occupations throughout his life, including farming, blacksmithing, bricklaying, masonry, carriage manufacturing, harness making, teaching, and operating a store. He also worked as an insurance broker and served as vice president of the Ludlow Savings Bank & Trust Company, later joining its board of directors. Additionally, he was a member of the Black River Academy board of trustees.

He held numerous local government positions in Plymouth, Vermont, such as town selectboard member, moderator at town meetings, town agent, tax collector, road commissioner, school superintendent, justice of the peace, and notary public. Coolidge was also Plymouth’s assistant postmaster for several years, a role humorously attributed to his familiarity with completing forms for the post office's annual reports to Washington, D.C.

For nearly four decades, he served as both a town constable and deputy sheriff of Windsor County. Between 1900 and 1902, during the governorship of William W. Stickney, who was a relative, Coolidge served as an aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel on the governor's military staff. He was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives, serving from 1872 to 1878, and later served in the Vermont Senate from 1910 to 1912, where he was chairman of the Committee on Land Taxes.

In his personal life, Coolidge married Victoria Josephine Moor in 1868; they had two children, Calvin, and Abigail, who was born in 1875 and died in 1890. Victoria Moor Coolidge died in 1885. He remarried Caroline Athelia Brown on September 9, 1891.

On the morning of August 3, 1923, following the death of President Warren G. Harding, Coolidge, who was serving as a justice of the peace and notary public in Vermont, administered the presidential oath of office to his son, Calvin Coolidge, at their family homestead in Plymouth Notch around 2:30 a.m.

John Calvin Coolidge Sr. died on March 18, 1926, in Plymouth, Vermont, at nearly 81 years of age. He was buried in Plymouth Notch Cemetery, where several generations of his family are also interred.