Your TR Source
President Roosevelt thanks Henry Wallace Phillips for the volume of short stories. Roosevelt tells Phillips that except for his family life, there was nothing he enjoyed more than ranch life and “nothing ever did me more good.” He also tells him that Patty Selmes and her daughter are now in New York.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-09-03
President Roosevelt writes to naturalist Edward Howe Forbush that he has just read Forbush’s report from last year on the destruction of birds in New England. Roosevelt asks if Forbush has noticed a change in numbers this spring or summer. Roosevelt has not noticed a difference, with many types of birds “as plentiful as ever,” noting he has been observing birds in Oyster Bay for 31 years. Only quail and woodcock numbers seem diminished.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-07-21
President Roosevelt will find someone else for the Long Island meeting instead of Senator Lodge. Roosevelt is interested in the outcome in St. Louis and will see if the new Secretary of the Navy Paul Morton will be more merciful than United States Attorney General Moody about ships for the Grand Army of the Republic.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-07-01
President Roosevelt congratulates Senator Lodge on the platform and comments that the convention “went off well.” Roosevelt was surprised at the outbreak of feeling against Secretary of Commerce and Labor and Chairman of the Republican National Committee Cortelyou. There is “little active part” that Roosevelt can take in the campaign, except for his speech and letter of acceptance.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-06-25
President Roosevelt will be unable to attend the banquet of the Medical Society of Long Island.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-10-03
William Loeb asks William F. Potter, Superintendent of the Long Island Railroad, to attach a private car for the 8:30 train from Oyster Bay to Long Island City for Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-09-22
Ottomar H. Van Norden recounts the Long Island Game Protective Association’s accomplishments for the year, including defeating the Long-Shiede Spring Shooting Bill, securing a motorboat with help from the state for water patrols, and better enforcement of game laws. He asks Theodore Roosevelt to actively support the Association and its platform by becoming a member.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-12-11
Ernest F. Distler asks Theodore Roosevelt for help obtaining better services on Long Island from the Long Island Railroad.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-06-27
William J. Youngs graciously thanks Theodore Roosevelt for the thoughtful gift of an interesting book, and encloses a letter that may interest him in return. He sends his regards to Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt and Ethel Roosevelt, and hopes to visit Long Island again soon.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-05-26
John Firman Coar asks Theodore Roosevelt if he would be “willing to express [his] sympathy with the purpose of the Mass Meeting” referenced in an enclosed petition. Coar notes that that many other prominent citizens have already signed it, and feels that Roosevelt’s endorsement of the meeting would drive support for higher education in Brooklyn and Long Island. He includes a leaflet that explains in greater detail the “present lamentable situation” in education which threatens to get worse if any present colleges are forced to close.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-03-02
Frank M. Chapman has sent some Zeiss binoculars to President Roosevelt and mentions a letter he received describing bird species found on Long Island, New York. In a handwritten postscript, Chapman describes having found feathers in the stomachs of some birds but cannot explain the reason for the habit.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-08-13
George T. Powell came to the Oyster Bay area in 1905 to examine trees and educate people on how to protect them from insects. He has recently been invited to visit the region again. Powell offers to look at President Roosevelt’s trees while he is there and to advise the estate’s superintendent on how to protect them. Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt indicated the work was not needed, as someone had attended to the estate’s trees last year.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-03-12
John Lewis Childs has found several yellow throated warbler nests on Long Island. He is interested in what President Roosevelt has said about seeing a spotted sandpiper and reports on his glimpse of an albino English sparrow.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-07-23
W. D. W. Miller of the American Museum of Natural History informs President Roosevelt that Frank M. Chapman is engaged in field work, but Miller can answer some of Roosevelt’s questions. The black-throated green warbler has been recorded on Long Island by naturalist A. H. Helme, and the southern limit of the purple finch’s range is similar to that of the warbler.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-06-19
John St. Loe Strachey believes that Americans are “drowned by security,” because their “immense power, wealth and happiness have inclined them that nothing could ever go wrong, and that they need take no precautions.” Strachey feels that President Roosevelt has done his best to counteract this attitude, but that it is a difficult business. He laments that the “men of light and leading” do not see that “liberty and good government and all the things that we prize most may need some day to be defended against the forces of autocracy and obscurantism.” Strachey also informs Roosevelt that General John Denton Pinkstone French inspected the Spectator‘s Experimental Company and was very pleased by them.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-08-29
Donald Wilson explains that the basket of apples from Delaware arrived at their facility from Adams Express Company half full and over-ripe. The importance of shipments to Sagamore Hill has been explained to all the staff at Long Island Express.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-07-24
Third Assistant Secretary of State Peirce writes to William Loeb regarding the schedule of the peace envoy’s trains.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-09-06
Board of Commissioners official MacFarland writes to President Roosevelt regarding a letter from Patent Office clerk and critic Benjamin P. Mann.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-07-06
Tweed Roosevelt relates memories and stories from the time he spent with his grandparents, Archibald B. Roosevelt and Grace Stackpole Lockwood Roosevelt, at their home on the north shore of Long Island near Sagamore Hill. Roosevelt describes their home in detail, and he writes of the summers and holidays he spent there which included rowing, sailing, bird watching, and hunting with his grandfather. Roosevelt also describes some of the people who worked at his grandparents’ house, and he describes visits to Sagamore Hill when Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt was still alive.
Two photographs of the house and photographs of Roosevelt and his grandfather accompany the essay.
Three book reviews, a book notice, and a look at Paul Russell Cutright’s career comprise the “Book Reviews” section. In “TR: The Making of a Conservationist,” Lewis L. Gould reviews Cutright’s Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist and notes that the work covers the formative years of Roosevelt’s life better than his first work on Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: The Naturalist. Gould says that Cutright challenges some of the assumptions made by David McCullough about Roosevelt’s childhood asthma. John A. Gable discusses Cutright’s two works on Roosevelt, lists his publications in the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, and reviews his teaching career and publications in “Paul Russell Cutright: Historian of Natural History.”
In “Presidential Children,” Gable gives a scathing review of Sandra L. Quinn and Sanford Kanter’s America’s Royalty: All the Presidents’ Children. Gable notes that the book is riddled with factual errors and that it has a “truly pathetic” bibliography. Gable also reviews Richard H. Collin’s Theodore Roosevelt, Culture, Diplomacy, and Expansion and notes that Roosevelt’s foreign policy was impacted by American culture and by the need to counter the imperialism of the leading European states. The section concludes with a notice about the publication of Between Ocean and Empire: An Illustrated History of Long Island which includes an essay on Roosevelt and Sagamore Hill written by Gable.