Did Calvin Coolidge's family use sign language when they didn't want to be overheard?

I don't know, but that was the search query someone used to get to the website for Um... recently.

I always thought that Coolidge's best weapon against being overheard was not to say much at all. There's a nice anecdote in Um... about Coolidge, who used to gather reporters to the White House every week for off-the-record chats. He was the first American president with a policy against being quoted verbatim (as I write on page 236 of Um...) -- reporters weren't allowed to quote him directly or even write down his words. One time, Coolidge castigated a reporter he saw taking shorthand of what the president was saying.

"Are you taking down in shorthand what I say?"

"Yes, sir," the reporter replied.

"Now I don't think that is right," Coolidge said. "I don't think that is the proper thing to do. Who do you represent?"

"David Lawrence," the reporter replied.

"Well, I wish you would tell Mr. Lawrence that I don't think it is the right thing to do...I don't object to you taking notes as to what I say, but I don't quite throw my communications to the conference into anything like finished style or anything that perhaps would naturally be associated with a Presidential utterance," Coolidge said.

The irony is this: we know exactly how the exchange went because it was recorded by a White House stenographer.