Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Leslie M. Shaw
President Roosevelt asks Secretary of the Treasury Shaw whether he and Owen Wister can come for breakfast on Sunday.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1904-04-15
Your TR Source
Wister, Owen, 1860-1938
Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Frank A. Edwards
President Roosevelt has lost touch but heard of the hard times Captain Edwards is experiencing and would be pleased to help Edwards without showing favoritism.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1903-09-11
Creator(s)
Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to James B. Connolly
President Roosevelt enjoys James B. Connolly’s work and is pleased to see an American author who “strikes a new note.” Roosevelt inquires whether Connolly liked Owen Wister’s recent novel, The Virginian.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1902-09-29
Creator(s)
Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to C. Grant La Farge
President Roosevelt invites C. Grant La Farge to Oyster Bay, New York, and mentions that Owen Wister will be in attendance on Wednesday.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1902-07-11
Creator(s)
Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Curtis Guild
President Roosevelt is happy Curtis Guild will be writing about him for Harvard Graduates’ Magazine. Even after the reactions to his dinner with Booker T. Washington, Roosevelt will not be swayed from his policy of appointing the best candidates for positions in the American South.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1901-10-28
Creator(s)
Letter from Henry Adams to Theodore Roosevelt
Using flowery prose, Henry Adams invites President Roosevelt to visit him. He had arranged entertainment for a guest who unfortunately became sick, and now is left with the various engagements he scheduled.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1901-1909
Creator(s)
Letter from William T. Hornaday to Theodore Roosevelt
William T. Hornaday is distressed and disgusted at the abundance of litter and vandalism encountered at parks, zoos, and other public places. At the New York Zoological Park, they have removed 100 park benches because of littering, and Hornaday places the blame on neighborhood women and “low class Jews.” Hornaday believes that American society has become too focused on personal liberty and has grown tolerant of the “disorderly element.” In a handwritten postscript, Hornaday describes the “worst case” of park vandalism encountered at the National Zoological Park, and the disappointing response from Charles D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1917-08-17
Creator(s)
Letter from Caspar Whitney to Theodore Roosevelt
Caspar Whitney informs Theodore Roosevelt about a symposium of opinions he is planning on the relative value of recreational fishing versus recreational shooting, an inquires if Roosevelt would like to contribute an opinion. Whitney lists individuals he has already solicited opinions from, and requests to hear back from Roosevelt by the end of next week, as any symposium on the subject matter would be incomplete without a word from him.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1911-05-31
Creator(s)
Letter from Carolyn A. Smith to Theodore Roosevelt
Carolyn A. Smith asks Theodore Roosevelt a specific question about cowboys for her essay on cowboy life to present to her literary society, the Kenilworth Society.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1911-04-15
Creator(s)
Letter from Mary Channing Wister to Theodore Roosevelt
Mary Channing Wister updates President Roosevelt on her husband Owen Wister’s health as he has been slowly recovering from an unknown fever. Wister also thanks Roosevelt for forwarding her suggestions to Commissioner of Education Elmer Ellsworth Brown. Wister updates Roosevelt on issues regarding education.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1909-03-02
Creator(s)
Letter from Mary Channing Wister to Theodore Roosevelt
Mary Channing Wister thanks President Roosevelt for the letter on behalf of her convalescent husband, Owen Wister, who will write personally when his health permits. He was disappointed to miss the chance to visit Roosevelt, and Mrs. Wister sends a paper and explanatory note that she had intended her husband to deliver. Her children are still delighted by their visit to the White House.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1909-02-01
Creator(s)
Letter from John O’Hara Cosgrave to William Loeb
Editor John O’Hara Cosgrave surrenders the rights from Everybody’s Magazine in order to see its contents published in a book on the Nature Fakers controversy. He looks forward to the book. He would like President Roosevelt to know that the writer Owen Wister will be covering the overspending scandal in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Cosgrave hopes Wister can adequately cover the topic.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1907-05-28
Creator(s)
Letter from Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt
Henry Cabot Lodge has enclosed a letter from Arthur Dehon Hill, son of President Roosevelt’s former Harvard professor Adams Sherman Hill, expressing his thoughts on the war not as “purely history” but as if “actual experience.” Hill’s views are a contrast to Owen Wister’s comments about those born after the war. Lodge would like Hill’s letter back as it is his only copy.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1906-08-14
Creator(s)
Letter from Rowland Gibson Hazard to Theodore Roosevelt
Rowland Gibson Hazard invites President Roosevelt to visit Rhode Island to educate the people as he did at Chautauqua.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1905-08-22
Creator(s)
He was a cowboy once–and young
Duane G. Jundt finds flaws and strengths in two books that chronicle Theodore Roosevelt’s time in the Dakota Badlands. Jundt notes that Michael F. Blake’s The Cowboy President: The American West and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt lacks historical objectivity and contains numerous factual errors while Christopher Knowlton’s Cattle Kingdom: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West places Roosevelt and his ranching experience in the wider context of the American West. Jundt highlights both books’ treatment of Owen Wister’s 1902 novel The Virginian. Jundt also examines certain aspects of these books against works by other Roosevelt biographers, and he asserts that both books emphasize the importance of Roosevelt’s time in Dakota to developing his conservation conscience.
The front cover illustrations for both works under review and a postcard of a cattle branding scene accompany the text.
Collection
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Creation Date
2020
An obscure book sheds light on a major presidential portrait of Theodore Roosevelt
A. Richard Boera tells the story of Fulop Laszlo’s portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt which was painted at the White House in March 1908. Most of Boera’s text comes from a biography of Laszlo published in 1939, and it includes long passages from Laszlo describing his interactions with Roosevelt, sketching a portrait of Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, and vignettes of life at the White House. Boera’s article in its text and its endnotes also discusses the 1903 John Singer Sargent portrait of Roosevelt.
Four color portraits painted by Laszlo, including those of the president and the first lady, appear in the text.
Collection
Our Literary President
Joseph R. Ornig chronicles Theodore Roosevelt’s work as a writer of histories, biographies, natural histories, essays, letters, and journalism. Ornig highlights some of these works, such as Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812 and The Winning of the West, by describing Roosevelt’s research, his aims, the books’ reception, and the time it took to complete them. Ornig also examines why Roosevelt wrote so much, citing the need to make money, articulating a reform agenda, and organizing his thoughts, and he notes those who acted as mentors to the literary Roosevelt like Henry Cabot Lodge and Owen Wister. Ornig also notes that Roosevelt assumed the role of mentor to many aspiring writers like the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson.
Eleven illustrations accompany the essay, including three of Roosevelt writing and two examples of his hand writing.
Collection
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Creation Date
2014
The education of Theodore Roosevelt part one
Wallace Finley Dailey, curator of the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University, recreates an exhibit on Theodore Roosevelt’s involvement with Harvard from his days as a student to his work as an overseer. The exhibit was displayed at Harvard in 1977, 1980, 1996, 2005, and 2012. The exhibit in article form consists of twenty-five photographs, including thirteen of Roosevelt, and numerous documents including letters, certificates, diary and notebook entries, and publications by and about Roosevelt. The accompanying text identifies each photograph and document, noting its source and providing context.
Collection
Book reviews
The “Book Reviews” section features three essays. In “‘The Negatives Are the Score the Prints Are the Performance,” Chris Foster examines Side Trips: The Photography of Sumner W. Matteson, 1898-1908. Foster looks at the development of photography equipment, especially Kodak cameras, notes the various locations in the American West, Mexico, and Cuba that Matteson documented, and pays particular attention to Matteson’s photographs of Native Americans and their culture. A photograph of a buffalo, a copy of which Matteson sent to President Theodore Roosevelt, accompanies the review and is the only illustration in the section.
In “A Tribute to George E. Mowry,” John Robert Greene reviews Reform and the Reformer in the Progressive Era.” Greene examines each of the essays in this tribute to George E. Mowry, a historian of the Progressive age, and finds a number of them disappointing, but he reserves special praise for an essay that provides an overview of Mowry’s career and for the transcript of an interview with Mowry from 1980.
John A. Gable reviews Peggy and Harold Samuels’s Frederic Remington: A Biography in “Remington’s West.” Gable notes the importance of Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Owen Wister to forming Americans’ view of the frontier West, and he catalogs many of Remington’s illustrations, paintings, and sculptures, some of which belonged to Roosevelt. Gable pushes back against some of the criticism that the Samuels compile against Remington, and he notes Roosevelt’s admiration for the artist.
Collection
Theodore Roosevelt’s proposed World War I division
Joe F. Decker provides a comprehensive bibliography of the various accounts of Theodore Roosevelt’s attempt to form a volunteer division during World War I. Decker begins with Roosevelt’s own first account in 1917 and concludes with John Milton Cooper’s version in The Warrior and the Priest of 1983. Decker examines books, book chapters, and articles on the subject, and finds that the story still has not been “dealt with satisfactorily.” Decker points out the biases and the shortcomings of some of the authors, and notes that many of the accounts strongly favor either Roosevelt or his antagonist President Woodrow Wilson.
A full page-photograph of Roosevelt and General Leonard Wood accompanies the article. A photograph of Harrison Engle and Sidney D. Kirkpatrick who directed documentary films on Roosevelt is featured, along with three photographs of Roosevelt from newsreel footage used in the film The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt.
A listing of the officers of the Theodore Roosevelt Association as well as the members of its executive, finance, and Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace committees is on page two of the article.