She was originally given the first name Frank, in honor of an uncle, but later decided to adopt the feminine variant Frances. A longtime close friend of Oscar Folsom, Grover Cleveland met his future wife shortly after she was born and he was 27 years old. He was fond of her, buying her a baby carriage and doting on her as she grew up. When her father died in a carriage accident on July 23, 1875, without having written a will, the court appointed Cleveland administrator of his estate.

She attended Central High School in Buffalo and Medina High School in Medina, New York, then Wells College in Aurora, New York. Cleveland proposed to Frances in the spring of 1885 when she visited Washington D.C. with her mother. They were married on June 2, 1886 in the Blue Room of the White House.

After her husband’s death in 1908, Frances Cleveland remained in Princeton, New Jersey. On February 10, 1913, at the age of 48, she married Thomas J. Preston Jr., a professor of archaeology at her alma mater, Wells College. She was the first presidential widow to remarry. She was vacationing at St. Moritz, Switzerland, with her daughters Marion and Esther and her son Francis when World War I started in August 1914. They returned to the United States via Genoa on October 1, 1914. Soon afterwards, she became a member of the pro-war National Security League, becoming its director of the Speaker’s Bureau and the “Committee on Patriotism through Education” in November 1918.

In honor of Frances Cleveland, Cleveland Hall was constructed in 1911 on the Wells College campus. Originally a library, the building currently holds foreign language classes, as well as classes in women’s studies, and a food pantry.

She stirred up controversy within the National Security League with claims that large sections of the population were unassimilated and in a sense prevented the country from working together properly. After causing outrage among the rank and file of the organization by wanting to psychologically indoctrinate school children to be in favor of war, she resigned on December 8, 1919. She also campaigned against women’s suffrage, contending that “women weren’t yet intelligent enough to vote”. In May 1913 she was elected as vice president of the “New Jersey Association Opposed to Woman’s Suffrage” and served as the president for the Princeton chapter.

While staying at her son Richard’s home for his 50th birthday in Baltimore, Cleveland died in her sleep at the age of 83 on October 29, 1947. She was buried in Princeton Cemetery next to President Cleveland, her first husband.