Friendship--Correspondence

Excerpts from 597 letters exchanged between Marion Morrison King and Edith Kermit Roosevelt. The letters shed light on Roosevelt’s love of books and reading, her relationship with her children, life at Sagamore Hill, and her health difficulties in later life.

A photograph of Roosevelt and two photographs of King accompany the article. A photograph unrelated to the article shows Executive Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association John A. Gable with three members of the Roosevelt family at Sagamore Hill.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

In this cancelled draft of a letter, Theodore Roosevelt tells Mary Elizabeth Bradley Jones that he enjoyed her note and the telegram from her father. He has written to her father.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1915-08-07

Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt enjoyed Owen Wister’s recent collection of stories. He wants to meet with Wister and discuss his experience of passing “through my own old country.” Unlike Wister, Roosevelt is not sure that change is both subjective and objective, especially as the old country he used to know so well has “absolutely vanished.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-05-22

George Cabot Lodge thanks President Roosevelt for his letter. Lodge is glad the president liked Edith Wharton’s anecdote. Lodge and his wife, Mathilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen Lodge, are grateful for Ethel Roosevelt’s help with the babies.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-06

Lawrence F. Abbott shares that President Roosevelt’s “letter of friendship and sympathy was a source of real comfort” to his father, Lyman Abbott. Roosevelt’s letters to newspaper editor Edgar Williams and David Scull of Bryn Mawr College arrived. Abbott, and therefore The Outlook, do not share Scull’s and Williams’s anxieties, as evidenced by the articles he attaches. Finally, he thanks Roosevelt for suggesting Judge Thomas Goode Jones’s letters regarding the railway issue.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-08-28

President Roosevelt hopes that Senator George Frisbie Hoar will be reasonable, but he will submit Oliver Wendell Holmes’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court regardless. Roosevelt is speaking in Providence, Rhode Island, on August 23, and then will go down to Newport, Rhode Island, so they can christen the baby (the son of one of his Rough Riders, Winthrop Chanler). He will also spend Monday with the Lodges in Nahant, Massachusetts, but Edith Roosevelt will not be able to attend.

Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society

Creation Date

1902-07-29

President Roosevelt received Senator Lodge’s letter and has already sent a letter to McDonald, likely referring to William Jesse McDonald. He also encloses his letter to Secretary of War Elihu Root. He informs Lodge that Governor Brodie of Arizona appointed Ben Daniels as the warden of the Arizona Penitentiary, both men former Rough Riders. When Roosevelt told John Hay of that fact, Hay responded, “Set a Rough Rider to catch a thief!”

Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society

Creation Date

1902-06-04

President Roosevelt is glad that Senator Lodge and his wife, Anna Cabot Lodge, enjoyed the speech. Roosevelt will call on Lodge by horseback at about 4:15 unless he hears otherwise.

Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society

Creation Date

1902-05-30

Theodore Roosevelt thanks George von Lengerke Meyer for his telegram.

Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society

Creation Date

1912-10-31

Theodore Roosevelt has received George von Lengerke Meyer’s report and was very interested in it. Roosevelt mentions that Corinne Roosevelt Robinson enjoyed “catching a glimpse” of Meyer and that Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt is feeling much better.

Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society

Creation Date

1912-02-02

Theodore Roosevelt informs George von Lengerke Meyer that the cartridges from the Winchester company are set to arrive soon by boat. Roosevelt thanks Marian Alice Appleton Meyer for the letter to himself and Edith Roosevelt. Roosevelt would like to visit Meyer after his trip to Africa to discuss matters relating to Meyer’s appointment as Secretary of Navy and the importance of avoiding blunders on the international front.

Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society

Creation Date

1909-03-18

Kermit Roosevelt photographs his father Theodore Roosevelt with a group of African people. Kermit was the official photographer of the African safari from 1909 to 1910. The message written on the postcard to Sedalia Momrer invites her and her sister to Matt Scheckel’s home on Friday night.

Collection

Fritz R. Gordner Collection

Creation Date

1910-02-21

A postcard featuring a color illustration of a child writing a rocking horse, with the caption “A ROUGH RIDER.” The message on the back, from Mrs. J. N. Faucett to Mrs. W. C. Ellis says only “Congratulations.”

Collection

Fritz R. Gordner Collection

Creation Date

1910-05-27

A postcard featuring a color illustration of a child riding on a white donkey. The words printed under the illustration say “A ROUGH RIDER.” There is a handwritten message to Mary Jamison, possibly from Louise, which says the writer is having a “fine time,” and the child in the illustration might look like one of Jamison’s babies. The back of the postcard contains Jamison’s address and two postmarks, one for September 12, 1904, in Monessen, Pennsylvania, and one for September 16, 1904, in Grand Canyon, Arizona.

Collection

Fritz R. Gordner Collection

Creation Date

1904-09-12

A postcard featuring illustrations of the return of the Atlantic fleet battleships, also known as the Great White Fleet, which completed a voyage around the world from December 16, 1907, to February 22, 1909. There is a poem entitled “WELCOME” by H. J. McKay printed in the bottom left corner, beneath an illustration of Uncle Sam shaking hands with a sailor. Portraits of Admiral Evans, President Roosevelt, and Admiral Sperry are printed on the bottom of the postcard. A list of all the ports visited on the voyage is printed on the right side of the postcard. The back of the postcard contains a printed list of the vessels which participated in the voyage. Albert Evans sends his love to his sister Marie in a handwritten message.

Collection

Fritz R. Gordner Collection

Creation Date

1909-03-25

Hortense asks Fannie Warnock to tell Carol that she will write soon. The postcard features an image of Theodore Roosevelt’s Maltese Cross cabin, with the caption “Theodore Roosevelt’s Dakota claim shack, where he lived on Ranch from 1883 to 1886.”

Collection

Fritz R. Gordner Collection

Creation Date

1909-02-20

President Roosevelt is unlikely to visit Davenport, Iowa, but First Lady Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt is sure he would visit Alice French there if he could. Edith appreciates the kind words regarding Archibald “Archie” B. Roosevelt. Emily Tyler Carow, Edith Roosevelt’s sister, would send her own message, but she is at her villa in Italy.

Collection

Newberry Library

Creation Date

1901-1909

Theodore Roosevelt is happy to hear from Father Belford and thinks he is right about the situation in Chicago. Roosevelt hopes that he and Belford will be able to see each other when things are “a trifle more normal.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1916-06-12

Theodore Roosevelt expresses concern at Meyer Lissner’s letter about his health and is sorry that he will not be in Chicago. Roosevelt wishes him and his wife well.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1916-06-05

Bishop Funston’s letter made Theodore Roosevelt feel proud and humble.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1916-06-03