Presidents' spouses--Biography

Nancy-Dabney Jackson examines the private life of her grandmother, Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt. She focuses on Roosevelt’s life after the death of her husband, Theodore Roosevelt. Jackson looks at Roosevelt’s church attendance, her love of gardening and the outdoors, and her devotion to reading. She notes that Roosevelt wore mourning black after her husband’s death and that she remained an intensely private person. Two photographs of Roosevelt appear in the article.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

Creation Date

1999

Creator(s)

Jackson, Nancy-Dabney, 1923-2010

Stacey A. Cordery examines the “shadows and sunshine” of Theodore Roosevelt’s time in Boston while an undergraduate student at Harvard College. Cordery identifies the shadows as the death of Roosevelt’s father, his disenchantment with his natural science major, and his failed courtship of Edith Kermit Carow. The countering sunshine was provided by Roosevelt’s successful pursuit of Alice Hathaway Lee. Cordery looks at each of these episodes, especially the courtship of Carow and Lee, and she argues that these episodes were pivotal to Roosevelt’s life and career.

Four photographs appear in the text, including two of Roosevelt with Lee.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

Creation Date

2007-10-27

Biography dominates the “Reviews” section of this issue: five biographies are considered, including those of four Roosevelts and one of Gifford Pinchot. Charles W. Snyder finds H. Paul Jeffers’s examination of Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt’s life to be less than complete, and he notes that the work focuses on Roosevelt’s military career, especially his service during World War II. John A. Gable revisits the work of husband and wife biographers Edmund Morris and Sylvia Jukes Morris in his essays on their biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt. Gable compares The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt with Theodore Rex, and he asserts that the endnotes in both works are worth reading. He notes that paperback editions of both of the Morris biographies have been issued to coincide with the release of Theodore Rex. 

Gable reviews Char Miller’s Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, and he describes the split in the environmental movement between the followers of Pinchot and John Muir. Gable highlights Pinchot’s career after his service in the Roosevelt administration, and he notes that Miller’s work has won two book awards for biography. “In Medal of Honor Revisited,” Gregory A. Wynn examines the arguments of two acclaimed military historians who take opposing views on Theodore Roosevelt’s Medal of Honor award. Wynn summarizes the arguments of  Edward M. Coffman and Allan Reed Millett, and he finds more merit in Coffman’s assertions based on eyewitness accounts of Roosevelt’s actions in battle. 

Two father-son photographs–Brigadier General Roosevelt with his son Quentin and Pinchot with his son Gifford B. Pinchot–appear in the section along with four text boxes highlighting various aspects of the Theodore Roosevelt Association such as its vision statement and website.

David H. Burton provides biographies of three Roosevelt women: Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Burton emphasizes Edith Roosevelt’s importance to her husband, Theodore Roosevelt, from raising their children to overseeing the renovation of the White House. With Longworth, Burton notes her marriage to Nicholas Longworth and her antipathy to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he says that her influence suffered because “she was never for anything.” Burton highlights Eleanor Roosevelt’s sad childhood but pays attention to, and praises, her considerable humanitarian work both as First Lady and in her later life.

A drawing of Edith Roosevelt by John Singer Sargent and photographs of Longworth and Eleanor Roosevelt supplement the text. A text box containing contact information for the Theodore Roosevelt Association also appears in the article.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

Creation Date

1996

The “Book Reviews” section examines two books in detail while providing short notices of five others under the heading “New Books of Interest.” Matthew J. Glover reviews Selwa Roosevelt’s chronicle of her seven year stint as Chief of Protocol for the United States during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. New books given brief notices include a study of President Theodore Roosevelt’s diplomacy in the Caribbean basin and an examination of Roosevelt as a speaker. The section also notes the publication of a paperback version of Sylvia Jukes Morris’s biography of Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt and a paperback of Theodore Roosevelt’s Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter. The section praises James F. Vivian’s collection of Theodore Roosevelt’s speeches in North Dakota and closes with a review of William Davison Johnston’s history of the Oyster Bay, New York, Presbyterian Church.

Photographs of Selwa Roosevelt and Richard H. Collin appear in the section as does a text box noting that this issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal is “dedicated to the memory of Archibald B. Roosevelt, Junior,” husband of Selwa Roosevelt.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

Creation Date

1990

John A. Gable begins the “Book Notes” column with a review of Sylvia Jukes Morris’s biography Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady. In doing so, he provides a shorter, but still complete examination of Roosevelt’s life, and highlights the research Morris did utilizing letters, Roosevelt’s diary, and interviews.

Three pictures of Edith Roosevelt are included in the review: one considered the favorite of her husband, Theodore Roosevelt; a drawing by John Singer Sargent; and a third of Edith Roosevelt with Lou Henry Hoover, the wife of Herbert Hoover.

In Gable’s following review of Frederick W. Mark’s Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt, Gable places the work in the context of other studies of Roosevelt and argues that it represents a further step in an ongoing reappraisal of Roosevelt. He quotes extensively from Marks and from Edmund Morris’s review of the work.

A picture of Roosevelt at his desk at Sagamore Hill accompanies the review.

A listing of the officers and the members of the executive, finance, and Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace committees of the Theodore Roosevelt Association is included among the reviews.

John A. Gable provides brief reviews of three books on Theodore Roosevelt and quotes other reviews about Sylvia Jukes Morris’s biography of Edith Kermit Roosevelt. He reviews A. A. Norton’s Theodore Roosevelt, which evaluates Roosevelt as a writer; William M. Gibson’s Theodore Roosevelt Among the Humorists, which looks at Roosevelt’s relationship with William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Finley Peter Dunne; and Thomas G. Dyer’s Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

Creation Date

1981

Creator(s)

Gable, John A.

Article describes the lecture and slide presentation given by Sylvia Morris, biographer of Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, wife of Theodore Roosevelt, in Oyster Bay, New York in May 1978 as part of a lecture series marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Sagamore Hill as a historic site. The article notes the content of the presentation, especially Edith Roosevelt’s moves to redesign and renovate the White House, and it provides biographical information about Morris and Edith Roosevelt. The article also lists the other speakers and presentations in the series. 

The portrait of Edith Roosevelt that hangs in the White House accompanies the article.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

Magazine article describing the family life of the Roosevelts at the White House. The centerfold is a layout of ten black and white photographs of the Roosevelt children.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site

Creation Date

1902-08

Creator(s)

Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August), 1849-1914

Owen Wister describes his recent work for General Wilson’s book The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914. He is writing the section about President Roosevelt and has refused Wilson’s request to include a short piece about Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt. The work has taken many hours, although it was difficult to create an appropriate tone in such a short piece.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1901-11-05

Creator(s)

Wister, Owen, 1860-1938