Did you know?
Trivia fans may know that American president Benjamin Harrison, who served from 1889 to 1893, was both preceded and succeeded in office by Grover Cleveland. But Harrison has another notable distinction on his presidential résumé.
Harrison was the country’s twenty-third president but the first to hire a woman White House staffer upon his selection of Alice Sanger as his presidential secretary on January 2, 1890. History.com suggests Harrison’s appointment of Sanger might have been an effort to extend an olive branch to the women’s suffrage movement, which was gaining momentum during the time Harrison spent in the White House.
Though Sanger was named to the White House staff 135 years ago, the United States has still not seen a woman elected to the office of the president.
