First Ladies Visit Wentworth by the Sea in 1948

In June 1948, Wentworth by the Sea hosted the National Governors’ Conference. As the governors, their wives, and other VIPs arrived, 60 shiny Ford motorcars stood in line outside the historic New Castle hotel. 

The event was the biggest in the history of the hotel, second only to the summer in 1905 when the Wentworth had hosted both Japanese and Russian delegates to the Treaty of Portsmouth. James and Margaret Smith were over the moon. The Colorado couple had purchased the “exclusive” 1874-era hotel only two years before, in 1946. Their $200,000 investment included over 200 hotel rooms, a golf course, a marina, outbuildings and staff dormitories, plus “The Ship” bar and restaurant, and a huge tidal swimming pool. 

The 1948 event was even more exciting due to the arrival of New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, who was then considered a shoo-in to defeat Harry S. Truman in the race for president of the United States. When Dewey and his wife arrived at the hotel, to the horror of Jim Smith, Dewey’s room had been assigned to Gov. J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

“At that moment I was in rather a panic as the hotel was filled,” Jim Smith later recalled. It took two minutes for the hotel owner, a staunch Republican, to locate a forgotten unbooked room for Gov. Thurmond. Smith then escorted the Deweys into the correct room. “That is the quickest change I ever saw at a hotel,” Dewey commented. 

Thomas Dewey lost the presidential election later that year, garnering 189 electoral votes to Democrat Harry Truman’s 303 votes. Strom Thurmond, who ran as a candidate for the “States Rights” Party, earned 39 electoral votes. 

This week’s photograph shows Elisabeth Meyers Warren (left), wife of California Governor Earl Warren and her daughter Dorothea. Dorothea is pinning a nametag on Frances Hutt Dewey, wife of Gov. Dewey at the 1948 Governor’s Convention in New Castle. While Dewey was defeated in four presidential elections, Earl Warren went on to become the 14th Chief Justice of the United States. 

(c) J. Dennis Robinsonm, all rights reserved