1878 was a consequential year in the life and loves of Theodore Roosevelt.
Midway through Harvard, and after the death of his father, Theodore broke up with Edith.Two months later, he met Alice Hathaway Lee.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
Martha Roosevelt, Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service
Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, known as Mittie, was described by her brother as “a black-haired bright eyed lassie lively in her impulse and with a ready tongue” who “does everything by impulse with an air of perfect self-confidence.” The phrase could readily apply to her strong-willed son, Theodore.
Thee Roosevelt, Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service
Thee Roosevelt, known as ‘Greatheart’, and his wife were opposites in nearly every way. He was a stern disciplinarian; she was indulgent with a vivacious personality.
Wenderoth & Taylor, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ca. 1862
Le Jeune, Paris, France, ca. 1870
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Born to a life of privilege, Teedie Roosevelt suffered debilitating asthmawhich attacked his frail frame with fevers and racking coughs. Homesick for Edie, Teedie traversed Europe for ten months staying in sixty-six hotels in eight countries with the Roosevelt family.
E. & H.T. Anthony. The Funeral of President Lincoln, New-York, April 25th. Broadway New York, ca. 1865. Courtesy of The Library of Congress
Lincoln’s funeral procession through New York City traveled up Broadway, passing directly by the home of C.V.S. Roosevelt. A six-year-old Teedie Roosevelt and his younger brother, Elliott, watched from their grandfather’s window. When Edie Carow screamed at the sight of disfigured Union soldiers, Teedie and Elliott locked her in a closet
Photograph by H. Glosser in 1867. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
Edith, seen here at four years old, witnessed the slow-moving failure of her father as a child. The Roosevelts welcomed her without judgment, though she must have felt a pang of jealousy at their marvelous travels and happy home life.
Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service
Charles Carow, Edith’s father, had a sensitive soul with an imaginative mind. An accident descended Charles further into alcoholism and the family deeper in debt.
Edith cherished lifelong the watercolors painted by her father, Charles Carow. Though Charles’s alcoholism weighed on the family, Edith saved the images he created of gallant horses, gentle pastures, and majestic ships.
Photographed by Allison Davis O’Keefe, Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service
Conie Roosevelt, Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service.
Conie Roosevelt, Theodore’s younger sister, was his sympathetic ear and emotional outlet. While Bamie served as TR’s political advisor and strategist, Conie was more empathetic.
Eleanor Roosevelt believed that had Bamie Roosevelt, Theodore’s eldest sister, lived 100 years later that she, not TR, would have been president.
Bamie Roosevelt, Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service.
Alice Hathaway Lee was strikingly beautiful. Taller than average at five-foot-eight, Alice had pale blue-gray eyes and dark, golden blonde hair that she often wore coiled. In 1880, she inspired Theodore to pen a full-throated endorsement of women’s equality, suffrage, land ownership, and equal pay for equal work.
Alice Hathaway Lee, Photograph by Allen & Rowell, Boston, Massachusetts, Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
The only known photograph of Alice Hathaway Roosevelt and her sister-in-laws, Bamie and Conie. To win Alice, Theodore relied on his sisters and mother to charm the Lee family. The three Roosevelt women loved one another and shared the goal of ensuring Theodore’s success.
Photograph by Julius Ludovici, ca. 1883. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
Photographs by Allen & Rowell, Boston, Massachusetts, May 10, 1879.
Teddy, as he was known to Alice, desperately wanted to capture an image known as a tintype of he and Alice together. He plotted for six months to get this photograph, only to have Rose, Alice’s cousin, sit between them.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Ever persistent, Teddy managed a second image, this time with Rose standing and he is seated next to Alice. She leaned into her cousin but sits erect here, and Teddy’s right hand is achingly close to touching Alice’s arm.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
Athletic and beguiling, Alice Hathaway Lee was nicknamed ‘Sunshine’ because of the vibrancy of her presence. Teddy stares intently at the woman he called “my wayward, willful darling.”
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
One of only three known photographs of the Roosevelt family home at 6 West 57th Street in New York City. TR’s prized but buffalo head adorns the parlor entrance. “There is a curse on this house! Mother is dying, and Alice is dying too!” Elliott Roosevelt exclaimed.
Photographed at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site by Allison Davis O’Keefe.
Distraught by the deaths of Alice and Mittie on February 14, 1884, Valentine’s Day. Theodore Roosevelt cut the hair of his wife and wrote, “The hair of my sweet wife, Alice, cut after death.” Theodore slashed his diary with an ‘X’ writing only “ The light has gone out of my life.”
Library of Congress.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Alice Roosevelt was born on February 12, 1884, two days before her mother and grandmother’s deaths. Bamie and her Aunt Anna Gracie cared for the baby while a depressed Theodore left his position in the New York State Assembly and fled to Dakota.
Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service.
Bamie, unmarried and with no children of her own when Alice Hathaway Roosevelt died on the same day as Mittie, quickly swung into action. She sold the home at 6 West 57th, oversaw the construction of Leeholm, which became Sagamore Hill, and took care of Alice for almost three years.
New York to Washington, D.C. Photograph by Wilhelm Studio, 1890. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
Edith pictured with Alice, standing, age seven, Ted, Jr., seated in front of Alice, age three, and baby Kermit. In their first fifteen years of marriage, Edith moved the family (which would double in size to six children during that same time) five times back and forth from
Photograph by Wilhelm, ca. 1887-1888. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Theodore thought Alice ought to stay with Bamie after he and Edith were engaged to be married. Edith insisted otherwise. Alice looks strikingly like her mother in this photo with a baby Ted, Jr.
Edith and Quentin, original glass negative photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1902. Library of Congress
Edith with her youngest child, Quentin, at age 5. Quentin’s death at age 20 in World War I shocked the nation and broke Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt was the first president of ‘the American Century’. He was the first president in an automobile, airplane, and submarine – and the first to travel abroad while in office.
Library of Congress
Edith Roosevelt, Photograph by Henry of Washington, D.C. between 1901-1909. Library of Congress
First Lady Edith Kermit Roosevelt read up to five newspapers a day, advised her husband every morning, and regularly sat in on critical White House meetings. “Whenever I go against her judgment, I regret it,” TR admitted.
Conie Roosevelt, Courtesy of Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, National Park Service
“Haven’t we had fun being governor of New York?” TR would say to Conie, his younger sister. The siblings took advantage of the sexism of the age, allowing Conie to overhear important political discussions and then talking through the options with her brother.
Album bound by Lugene, Inc., Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Theodore Roosevelt spoke to an audience of 2,500 women in Spokane, Washington, on Sept. 9, 1912, and said: "It is not only your right but your duty to exercise it. You are false to your duty as citizens and women if you fail to register and vote.” After the speech, women rushed to register at a site one block from the theater.
The Progressive Party in 1912 was the first to adopt women’s suffrage to its national platform. During TR’s presidency (1901-1909) women had the right to vote in four states (Wyo., Colo., Utah, Idaho). By 1912, five more (Wash., Calif., Ariz., Kan., Ore.) had joined the list.
Personal collection of the author
Photograph by Edward Curtis, 1904. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Quentin Roosevelt, age six, in a field of flowers at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay. The youngest of the Roosevelt children, Quentin was a darling of the press and public.
Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History USNM 19234.
Photograph by George Grantham Bain, 1885. Library of Congress.
Theodore arrived in Dakota a ‘dandy’ sporting a stylish deer-skin hunting suit replete with an engraved knife from Tiffany.
Legend holds that the horns of two elk stags, interlocked in a battle to the death, stirred Roosevelt to christen the Elkhorn Ranch. Investigation by historian and naturalist Darrin Lunde aims to prove whether these horns, which were collected sometime in the 1880s, inspired the name.
Photograph by Pirie MacDonald, February 17, 1900.Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Alice was the eldest of six Roosevelt children and, of course, the only one not born to Edith. Here Alice is pictured with her siblings just after 16th birthday, and sixteen years to the day that she was baptized in Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, the site of her mother and grandmother’s funeral one day prior.
Roosevelt family snapshot, 1905. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
At boarding school, being the son of the sitting President, he was frequently the target of hard tackles and cheap shots on the field.
Ted, Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps and later served in both World War I and World War II. He and his distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, bitterly fought over who was the rightful heir to Theodore’s political legacy.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Ethel Roosevelt, seen here at age 10, became the steward of the Roosevelt legacy after the deaths of Edith, Conie, and Bamie. She was a nurse in World War I, secured the preservation of Sagamore Hill, and served as a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Photograph by Edward S. Curtis from "The President's family," McClure's, 1905 July. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Alice Roosevelt spent summers with the Lee family in Boston. Edith, who kept meticulous financial records, never accounted for Alice because she had money from her wealthy, deceased mother’s parents.
Photograph by Pach Brothers, Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
The eldest grandchild, Grace, was 9 years old when her grandfather died. Grace graduated from the Sorbonne and became an accomplished photographer.
Three generations of Theodore Roosevelt: TR, Ted, Jr., and his son, Ted, III as a baby in 1915. Father and son both served in World War II.
Library of Congress
New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)
Gaunt and noticeably thinner after the Amazon journey that nearly killed him, Theodore Roosevelt returns to the United States in 1913.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
The death Quentin at age 20 in World War I devastated Edith and Theodore. Though the former president and First Lady stoically continued their public engagements, Ethel Roosevelt later speculated that after the death of Quentin her father died of a broken heart.
Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service.
One of the last photographs made of Edith and Theodore Roosevelt together in 1918. Though only separated by three years, Theodore is considerably more aged than Edith, who outlived him by three decades.
Jacob Schloss, 1900. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
The ‘Goddess’ photo was Theodore’s favorite of his wife of 32 years. Edith was forty years old when Theodore became president, and her work redefined the role of first lady, setting the example for a century to follow.
Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, National Park Service.
Edith and Theodore were married on December 2, 1886, at St. George’s Church in London. On their marriage certificate, Theodore listed his “condition” as “Widower”, while perhaps surprisingly, given the occasion, Edith is listed as “Spinster”. Edith does not list an occupation while Theodore is “Ranchman.”
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Sampler designed and stitched by Edith Kermit Roosevelt in 1925 depicting the significant events of she and Theodore’s life together. The top two lines are family and home life, the third and fourth are the major activities of TR’s political life and explorations, and the fifth line commemorates the deaths of TR and Quentin and the three Roosevelts who served in World War I. The final lines contain the initials of the Roosevelt grandchildren.
After the death of her husband, Edith’s days were filled with family, friends, her garden and the farm. Every year she made a point to be away from Sagamore Hill on the anniversary of TR’s passing.
Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service.
Edith lived for thirty years after her husband’s death. Her passport was well-worn with trips to the Caribbean, England, South Africa, France, Italy, and a two-month around the world trip with stops in India, Vietnam, Japan, China, Siberia, and Russia.
As a widow, Edith traveled the world. In 1934, the French Minister of Fine Arts issued Edith an annual pass to the Louvre in Paris.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service.
Edie Carow, at age fourteen, kept a scrapbook with her younger sister. In it, the siblings pasted ornate Valentine’s and their favorite poems. Hidden behind a secret compartment, under the title “Joy” and “Sorrow,” is a poem which reads: “I Love Thee.”
Scrapbook photographed by Allison Davis O’Keefe at Sagamoe Hill National Historic Site
Bill Sewall, a Maine woodsman and wilderness guide, helped build the Elkhorn Ranch and lived with Theodore in Dakota. Sewall was fond of poetry, and helped TR live what he later called the “strenuous life.”
Photographs by Underwood & Underwood, 1884. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Wilmot Dow, Bill Sewall’s nephew, joined Theodore and his Uncle in the Badlands. Sewall & Dow brought their wives from Maine to join them in Dakota and each gave birth at the Elkhorn.
The Marquis de Mores (right) was a dreamer and a schemer. Married to a wealthy New York heiress, Medora von Hoffman (left), the eccentric Frenchman founded the town of Medora, North Dakota (named for his wife) to raise cattle and ship them East by newly invented refrigerated cars. The gambit was “ranch to table” beef– an idea about 100 years ahead of its time.
Photographs by L.A. Huffman. Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College
Sylvane Ferris was hired as Theodore’s hunting guide during his first trip to the Badlands in 1883. Ferris later ran a general store, and caught the eye of Conie, who found him to be “the ideal cowboy of one’s wildest fantasy.”
Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard College