The only New Jersey native president was born March 18, 1837

There is only one US President who was born in New Jersey, Grover Cleveland, and he was born on March 18th, 1837 in Caldwell. His given name is Steven Grover Cleveland and was the fifth of nine children.

Cleveland is the only president to serve two, non-consecutive terms and is also the only president to marry in the White House. According to History.com, while Cleveland was born in the Garden State, he moved to New York as a child. Although he didn’t attend law school, he clerked at a law firm and passed the bar, eventually starting his own firm. He served as mayor of Buffalo, New York, as well as governor of that state.

An interesting note, Cleveland paid a Polish immigrant to serve in his place in the Civil War. Cleveland weathered a paternity scandal (he admitted paying child support to a woman who claimed her child was fathered by him) and not only got the Democratic nomination but the presidency as well. While in office, Cleveland vetoed more bills than his 21 predecessors combined. While president, he married a woman 27 years his junior and became the only president to have their marriage ceremony in the White House.

Cleveland lost his bid for a second term in 1888 to Benjamin Harrison and went back to New York. He ran again in 1894 and won a second, non-consecutive term, the only president to do that. He declined to run for a third term (which was allowed at that time), and returned to New Jersey and served as a trustee at Princeton University until his death in 1908. According to the book This Day in New Jersey History, he is buried in Nassau Presbyterian Church’s Princeton Cemetery.

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