BAMIE
Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt Cowles was Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest sister and key political strategist. Bamie was to TR what Robert F. Kennedy was to his brother, President John F. Kennedy. Suffering from a spinal defect, Bamie showed her younger brother how to persevere through physical pain. Though only three years older, Bamie often acted like another mother to TR, even caring for his daughter for the first three years of her life. As an advisor, Bamie was involved in every major decision in TR’s political and personal life. Theodore called Bamie his “feminine Atlas” carrying the weight of the world on her, not his, shoulders.
Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service.
Eleanor Roosevelt believed that had Bamie Roosevelt, Theodore’s eldest sister, been a man that she, not Theodore Roosevelt, would have been president.
Bamie’s home in Washington, D.C. during TR’s presidency became known as “the little White House.”
Courtesy of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection, National Park Service.
Bamie played many roles in Theodore Roosevelt’s life: sister, advisor, strategist, alternate mother, and even cared for Alice Roosevelt, the daughter born to TR and his first wife Alice, who died on the same day as Mittie. Bamie sold the “cursed” Roosevelt home on 6 West 57th Street, managed the construction of what became Sagamore Hill, and cared for Alice for almost three years while Theodore mourned and recovered in the Badlands of Dakota.
Photograph by Julius Ludovici, ca. 1883. 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.