John Quincy Adams kept an alligator in a White House bathtub. The animal was reportedly a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat and military officer who had supported the American cause during the American Revolution.
The alligator supposedly stayed in a bathroom near the White House East Room during Adams’s presidency, which lasted from 1825 to 1829. Stories say Adams enjoyed showing the unusual creature to startled visitors. The White House itself has repeated the account in historical and educational materials, although some historians note that firm contemporary evidence is lacking.
This story is sometimes confused with later presidential animal tales, including Herbert Hoover’s sons’ pet alligators and Theodore Roosevelt’s family menagerie. It is also easy to mix up John Quincy Adams with his father, John Adams, the second U.S. president. Whether every colorful detail is reliable or not, the alligator is the traditional answer to this famous presidential-pet question.