Edith Roosevelt

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Edith Roosevelt around 1903, photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston
Edith Roosevelt

Edith Roosevelt (born August 6, 1861 in Connecticut as Edith Kermit Carow , † September 30, 1948 ) was the second wife of US President Theodore Roosevelt . She was the First Lady of the United States from 1901 to 1909.

Life

Edith Roosevelt was born in Connecticut , the daughter of Charles and Gertrude Tyler Carow , but grew up in Union Square, New York City, in an affluent and traditional environment. Edith knew her future husband Theodore Roosevelt from childhood. As a little girl she was friends with Theodore's sister Corinne . The Roosevelt children and the Carow children went in and out of each other's houses.

Edith later attended Miss Comstock's Major Daughter School. It is reported that Edith loved books above all else and, despite Commstock's polish, preferred an adventurous life to a quiet one. In the summer she often moved to Oyster Bay on Long Island with Theodore, with whom she had a more comradely friendship . One of her sons later stated: "When Mother was a little girl, she must have been a boy!".

The Roosevelt family in 1895: Theodore Roosevelt, Archibald, Theodore junior, Alice, Edith Roosevelt with Kermit and Ethel. (The youngest son Quentin cannot be seen because he was born in 1897)

Theodore and Edith lost sight of each other when Theodore went to Harvard . It was only after Theodore's first wife Alice Hathaway Lee (1861-1884) died unexpectedly that Edith and Theodore became closer again. They were married in London in December 1886 . Back in New York, they settled on Sagamore Hill on Oyster Bay. The marriage had five children in ten years:

  1. Theodore Jr. (1887–1944) ⚭ 1910 Eleanor Butler Alexander (1889–1960)
  2. Kermit (1889–1943) ⚭ 1914 Belle Wyatt Willard (1892–1968)
  3. Ethel (1891–1977) ⚭ 1913 Richard Derby (1881–1963)
  4. Archibald (1894–1979) ⚭ 1917 Grace Stackpole Lockwood (1894–1971)
  5. Quentin (1897-1918)
Official portrait of Edith Roosevelt as First Lady

Even before they moved into the White House , the family's privacy was largely withdrawn from the public. Only the wedding of the "Princess" Alice (1884–1980) with Senator Nicholas Longworth (1869–1931) and Ethel's debut were celebrated on a larger scale. Later it was said of Edith that she was “always the gentle, high-bred hostess; smiling often at what went on about her, yet never critical of the ignorant and tolerant always of the little insincerities of political life ”. Theodore Jr. wrote to his father: "if Mother had been a mere unhealthy Patient Griselda I might have grown set in selfish and inconsiderate ways."

She accompanied her husband on the first foreign trip of an incumbent US president , which led to Panama on November 9, 1906 . There Theodore Roosevelt wanted to get an idea of ​​the construction work on the Panama Canal for himself . The battleship USS Louisiana was chosen for the trip .

With a mixture of humor and dignity, Edith represented the Roosevelts even after her husband's tenure. She stayed true to her extensive reading - "not only cultured but scholarly", as her husband once remarked. After Theodore's death in 1919, Edith traveled frequently, but kept returning to Sagamore Hill. In 1932 she was briefly involved in the presidential election campaign , where she spoke out in favor of the re-election of the Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover . However, this lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt , a distant cousin of her late husband. Later she got involved with the Needlework Guild , a charitable institution for the collection mainly of clothes for the poor, and in the "Christ Church at Oyster Bay". Edith Kermit Roosevelt died at the age of 87 on September 30, 1948.

literature

  • Sylvia Jukes Morris: Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady , New York 1980, Coward, McCann and Geoghegan
  • Nancy Roosevelt Jackson: A Sense of Style: Remembering Edith Kermit Roosevelt , 1999, Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
  • Catherine Forslund: Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt: The Victorian Modern First Lady. In Katherine AS Sibley (Ed.): A Companion to First Ladies. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2016, ISBN 978-1-118-73222-9 , pp. 298-319.

Web links

Commons : Edith Roosevelt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert H. Ferrell: The Twentieth century: an almanac , page 60. World Almanac Publications 1985. ISBN 034532630X
  2. ^ Foreign Trips of Incumbent First Ladies. Retrieved March 16, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Roosevelt, Edith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roosevelt, Edith Kermit; Carow, Edith
BRIEF DESCRIPTION second wife of US President Theodore Roosevelt with extensive charitable commitment
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1948