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LIFE AND WORK OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL

CHAPTER TWO

 BIRTH AND BOYHOOD

Theodore Roosevelt a, Native of New York—His Pioneer Ancestry—Social and Political Leaders in New York City — His Parents and Grandparents — The Soy Father of the Man.
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HEODOEE ROOSEVELT, destined to become twenty-sixth President of the United States and the typical American citizen, was born on October 27, 1858, at No. 28 East 20th Street, New York City. He came of one of the oldest Dutch-American families. For more than two hundred years his forbears have been leaders in the community and councils of New York.

Members of the family were prominent in the commercial and public lif e of the colony under both Dutch and English rule, and, subsequent to the Revolution, in the State. Among them were merchants and lawyers of distinction, who served in both the provincial and the State legislatures.

The founder of the family in America was Klaes Martensen van Rosevelt (as the name was originally spelled), who left Holland about 1644 "to better himself spiritually and financially." After many days in the steerage of a slow-sailing vessel, he landed at what was then called New Amsterdam, at the foot of Manhattan Island. He was a typical settler, or immigrant, much the same as many who yearly come to our shores and are given the freedom of the country to prove themselves good citizens or failures, thrifty or shiftless, the founders of American families or burdens to the state. It was his fortune to found a great, a useful, and a patriotic American family, of untold value to the state and the nation.

From that time for the next seven generations every one of the Roosevelts was born en Manhattan Island, and for seven generations Roosevelts, father and son, have from the same district in New York represented the people in the city council, the State Assembly and the United States Congress. In Theodore Roosevelt's ancestry are found soldiers and political leaders, merchants, judges, planters and philanthropists.

During the Revolution some of the family served acceptably, though without special distinction, in the Continental army. Others rendered service in the Continental Congress or in various local legislatures. There were ancestors of Theodore Roosevelt both in the North and in the South during the Revolutionary period. Those in the North were for the most part merchants; those in the South planters.
A Dinner to George Washington
Of Klaes van Rosevelt's descendants, one of the many to appear in prominence was Isaac Roosevelt, who had dropped the "Van" and was a member of the New York provincial council, a member of the city council and the president of the Bank of New York.

As an auditor of the accounts of the State at the close of the Revolution in 1783 Isaac Roosevelt approved a bill for the entertainment of the French Minister and George Washington at a dinner where the bill for wine considerably exceeded the bill for food, and where, as Colonel Roosevelt pointed out in his autobiography, only eight of the guests survived the potations to coffee. One John Cape was the caterer, and his significant bill was as follows:

The State of New York, to John Cape	Dr.

To a Dinner Given by His Excellency the Governor and Council to their Excellencies the Minister of France and General Washington & Co. 1783

December
To 120 dinners at 8s		            £48: 0:0
To 135 Bottles Madira  	              54: 0:0
"36…. ditto Port  		             10:16:0
"60     ditto English Beer		        9:0:0
"30    BoulsPunch		                9:0:0
" 8…. dinners for Musick	               1:12:0
"10      ditto for Sarvts		        2: 0:0
 60    Wine Glasses Broken	               4:10:0
  8     Cutt decanters Broken	       3:  0:0
Coffee for 8 Gentlemen		        1:12:0
"     Music  fees  &ca		       8:  0:0
''     Fruits & Nuts		               5:  0:0
                                          £156:10:0
By  Cash   	                             100:16:0
                                             55:14:0

We a Committee of Council having examined the above account do certify it (amounting to one hundred and fifty-six Pounds ten Shillings’) to be just. December 17th 1783.

ISAAC ROOSEVELT
 JAS. DTJANE 
EGBT. BENSON 
FRED. JAY

Received the above Contents in full
New York 17th December 1783	
JOHN CAPE

Imagine the effect on public opinion if a bill of that nature were to be presented nowadays for payment by the State of New York, for the entertainment of the French Ambassador and General Pershing.

An earlier ancestor was Nicholas J. Roosevelt, born in New York and a member of the City Council of New York from 1700 to 1701. His son, John, a merchant, served as a member of the city government from 1748 to 1767, and laid the foundation of the Roosevelt fortune. John's son, Cornelius, was also a merchant who was elected to the New York city council following the Revolution, from 1785 to 1801. The son of Cornelius, James Roosevelt, another merchant, was a member of the city council in 1797 at the same time his father was a member.

President Roosevelt's Grandfather
The son of James was James J. Roosevelt, grandfather of the future President. He was a member of the city council of New York from 1828 to 1830, a member of the State Legislature and congressional representative from 1835 to 1840.

James J. Roosevelt was associated with Robert Fulton in the invention of the steamboat, and the promotion of navigation by steam. After the success of the experiment had been established in the tidewater region, James J. Roosevelt made a survey of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, with the idea of introducing steam navigation in those streams. Satisfied that the plan was feasible, he built at Pittsburgh the first steamboat on the Western inland waters, with which in the winter of 1810-1811 he made the first trip by steam from that point to New Orleans.
"Of my grandfather," said the Colonel in his autobiography, "my most vivid childish reminiscence is not something I saw, but a tale that was told me concerning him. In his boyhood, Sunday was as dismal a day for small Calvinistic children of Dutch descent as if they had been of Puritan or Scotch Covenanting or French Huguenot descent—and I speak as one proud of his Holland, Huguenot and Covenanting ancestors, and proud that the blood of that stark Puritan divine, Jonathan Edwards, flows in the veins of his children. One mer afternoon, after listening to an unusually long Dutch Reformed sermon for the second time that day, my grandfather, a small boy, running home before the congregation had dispersed, ran into a party of pigs, which then wandered free in New York streets. He promptly mounted a big boar, which no less promptly bolted and carried him at full speed through the midst of the outraged congregation.''

His Father
James J. Roosevelt's son Theodore (1831-1878), the father of the President, was one of the foremost citizens of New York. He was a member of the prosperous house of Roosevelt & Co., glass importers, of Maiden Lane, when on a trip to Georgia he met Miss Martha Bulloch, mother of the future President. During the Civil War he aided in the equipment and organization of troops, including negro regiments, and was one of the leaders in organizing the Sanitary Commission. He suggested and drew up the Federal Allotment law, devised for the purpose of saving the pay of soldiers, and himself served as a member of the State Allotment Commission which saved more than $5,000,000 for the soldiers of New York State. He was one of the founders of the Union League Club, the Orthopedic Hospital, and the Children's Aid Society, while the Newsboys' Lodging House owed its existence to his sole efforts. As a practical philanthropist, the works he accomplished for the poor were legion, and when he died, in 1878, a year before his famous son became of age, flags flew at half-mast all over the City of New York and rich and poor followed his remains to the grave.

It is interesting at the present time, with the problems of reconstruction after the Great War staring the nation in the face, that on the return of peace after the Civil War, when hundreds of thousands of young men were suddenly mustered out of the army and thrown upon their own resources, it was the elder Roosevelt who formed a Soldiers' Employment Bureau in New York, whose streets were thronged with idle and moneyless men. To see that they got their just dues from the Government without being robbed by claim agents, he joined in establishing the Protective Claims Association.

"My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew,'' said the Colonel in recalling his youth. '' He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness. As we grew older he made us to understand that the same standard of clean living was demanded for the boys as for the girls; that what was wrong in a woman could not be right in a man. With great love and patience and the most understanding sympathy and consideration, he combined insistence on discipline. He never physically punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom I was ever really afraid. I do not mean that it was a wrong fear, for he was entirely just, and we children adored him.''

His Mother
On his mother's side, Theodore Roosevelt was descended from some of the best-known families of the South, combining in his veins the blood of both Scotch-Irish and Huguenot ancestors. His great-great-grandfather, Archibald Bulloch, was a member of the Continental Congress, and the first State Governor of Georgia. One of his great-grandfathers, Daniel Stewart, was a brigadier-general in the Continental army.
The lineal descent on the maternal side to Colonel Roosevelt was as follows: One of the sons of Governor Bulloch of Georgia was Captain James Bulloch of the Virginia state garrison, who was born in 1765. He and his wife, Annie Irvine, were the parents of Major James S. Bulloch, who married a daughter of United States Senator Dunwoodie, and later married Martha Stewart, daughter of General Daniel Stewart of the Revolution. Of this marriage came Martha Bulloch, who married Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., of New York on December 23, 1853, at her father's home in Roswell, Cobb County, Ga. These were the parents of Theodore Roosevelt, who became President of the United States and died at Oyster Bay, N. Y., on January 6, 1919.

Of his mother, the late President wrote: '' My mother, Martha Bulloch, was a sweet, gracious, beautiful Southern woman, a delightful companion and beloved by everybody. She was entirely 'unreconstructed' to the day of her death. Her mother, my grandmother, one of the dearest of old ladies, lived with us and was distinctly over-indulgent to us children, being quite unable to harden her heart towards us even when the occasion demanded it."

It is interesting to note that Theodore's two uncles on his mother's side, James Dunwoodie Bulloch and Irvine Bulloch, of Georgia, visited the Roosevelts in New York shortly after the close of the Civil War. Being at that time among the Confederates exempted from the amnesty, they came under assumed names.

Mrs. Roosevelt's elder brother, Captain James Dunwoodie Bulloch, had been in the United States Navy, but at the outbreak of the Civil War was in the merchant marine, commanding a ship plying between New York and New Orleans. This ship, the Bienville, was in port at New Orleans at the time of the secession of Louisiana from the Union, and the Governor commanded Captain Bulloch to turn her over to the state. The Captain refused, and his fealty to the South was brought into doubt. Nevertheless he believed that honor required him to deliver the vessel into the hands of her owners in New York. Until he had done that he did not feel free to join the Confederacy.
On offering his services to Jefferson Davis, he was at once commissioned a captain in the Confederate Navy and dispatched to England to buy arms for the new government. He discharged this duty successfully and delivered his purchases, being the first to run the blockade.
His next assignment was one of the most important and delicate tasks that fell to a Confederate officer. He returned to England to buy and equip vessels of war for the South. The British government was forbidden by the laws of neutrality to permit such a thing to be done in her ports. The minister of the United States did his utmost to prevent the launching of the Confederate vessels which Captain Bulloch built, and commissioners were hastened from Washington, with $10,000,000 in United States bonds, in a last effort to stop his work.
But he was not checked until he had set afloat fully half a dozen ships under the stars and bars of the South, among them the Alabama, and when the war was over Great Britain was compelled, by the arbitration of Geneva, to pay the government of the United States $15,000,000 for the damages which Captain Bulloch's ships had inflicted on Northern shipping. For his services he was commissioned admiral by the Confederacy.
Mrs. Roosevelt's younger brother Irvine won a commission in the navy of the South and was the navigating officer of the Alabama in the destructive cruise of that ship. When the Alabama was sunk in a battle with the United States ship Kearsarge off the coast of France, he commanded the last gun that was in action and fired the last shot from her sinking deck. The men of the Alabama were rescued by an English yacht, and Irvine Stephens Bulloch married the daughter of one of his English rescuers.

President Roosevelt did not hesitate to say that he was proud of the gallantry of his Confederate uncles in the war, and of "Uncle Jimmy" he said: "My uncle always struck me as the nearest approach to Colonel Newcome (Thackeray's hero in 'The Virginians') of any man I ever met in actual life."

A Product of Heredity
Even this cursory glance at the nature of his ancestry will doubtless be found sufficient to force conviction that Theodore Roosevelt was essentially a product of heredity—"an example which the eugenists (whose views he championed) may cite with pride, and a witness to the value of taintless blood and vigorous stock. He was what he was, through the heritage of his ancestors."

Henry Adams, a great-grandson of one President and a grandson of another wrote of him a few years ago that "Roosevelt, more than any other man living, - showed the primitive quality that belongs to ultimate matter—the quality that medieval theology assigned to God—he was pure act. * * * Roosevelts are born and never can be taught."

And it is a striking fact that even that supreme endowment of will, which enabled him by conscious discipline and conscientious endeavor to build over his puny body into one of vast energy and strength, may readily be traced to ancestors of stark Puritan makeup, to whom an implacable will was most pleasing in the sight of God and the lack of it an evil and a horror.

The superb physical equipment of Roosevelt's progenitors, which had become weakened through time and chance, he regained by the use of the great fund of resolution with which they had endowed him.

In his veins was Dutch, German, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, French Huguenot, and English blood, with the blood of Dutch dissenters and Scotch Covenanters predominating. In him were blended the temperaments of the Calvinists of the North and the French Huguenots of the South, of the Quakers and of the Puritans. And of these the outstanding virtues are obviously honesty, strength of conviction, righteousness, self-discipline, and the fighting qualities which insure and go with them. In his ancestry can be traced no neurasthenics or sentimentalists, no wavering, weak-willed, inert, and dependent men or women. The Roosevelt stock has given us no poets or philosophers, theologians or great authors, men of arts or of science; but it has given us men of service and of action.

Boyhood Days
The Roosevelt baby who was destined to become the Nation's twenty-sixth—and youngest—President was one of four children, two boys and two girls. He was the elder son and the only one to grow to manhood. The house on East Twentieth Street in which he was born was a typical New York town house of the old-fashioned sort, in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan. It was furnished as he himself has said, "in the canonical taste of the New York which George William Curtis has described in ' The Potiphar Papers.' The black haircloth furniture in the dining room scratched the bare legs of the children when they sat on it. The middle room was a library, with tables, chairs, and bookcases of gloomy respectability. It was without windows, and so was available only at night. The front room, the parlor, seemed to us children to be a room of much splendor, but was open for general use only on Sunday evening or on rare occasions when there were parties. The Sunday evening family gathering was the redeeming feature in a day which otherwise we children did not enjoy—chiefly because we were all of us made to wear clean clothes and keep neat."

As a boy the young Theodore played tag in Madison Square, which was not far from his home in East Twentieth Street. The summers were spent in the country, now at one place, now at another, sometimes at Oyster Bay, Long Island, where Mr. Roosevelt subsequently made his permanent home.

All the Roosevelt children loved the country and its outdoor life, and were always wildly eager to get to the country when spring came. They had there all manner of pets, ran barefoot much of the time, and with a favorite Shetland pony named General Grant developed a great fondness and aptitude for riding. Thirty years later, by the way, Theodore's own children had a pony named General Grant.

Thanksgiving was a festival of great rejoicing in the family, but it was not to be compared with Christmas, which was to the young Roosevelts "an occasion of literally delirious joy." In the next generation it was the annual pleasure of the Colonel to reproduce for his children the Christmas joys of his own youth.
As a boy the young Theodore was puny and sickly; but with that indomitable determination which characterized him in every act of his life, he entered upon the task of transforming his feeble body not merely into a strong one, but into one of the strongest. How well he succeeded every American knows. This physical feebleness bred in him nervousness and self-distrust, and in the same indomitable way he set himself to change his character as he changed his body, and to make himself a man of self-confidence and courage. He has told the story himself in his autobiography:

"When a boy I read a passage in one of Captain Marryat's books which always impressed me. In the passage the captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not frightened. After this is kept up long enough it changes from pretense to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it (I am using my own language, not Marryat's.) This was the theory upon which I went. There were all kinds of things which I was afraid of first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose. They will first learn to bear themselves well in trials, which they anticipate and school themselves in advance to meet After awhile the habit will grow on them, and they will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon them unawares."

Weak, but Not an Invalid
Theodore, the child, was far from being an invalid during those early days at Oyster Bay and elsewhere in the country, but he was markedly less robust than even the physical average of his little playmates—so much so that he was rarely permitted to play with the lusty youngsters of his neighborhood.

But he had a strong will and a crystal brain even when a child. He battled with a troublesome asthma in boyhood days by "working" in a porch gymnasium. Steadily his bodily health was being brought nearer the normal by outdoor exercise, the' boy himself as he grew older arranging a programme of rowing, swimming in the Sound, hikes over the hills, long horseback rides. Also he kept a diary and read so many books of history and adventure that he was a boyish bookworm.

As he grew older and as his chest expanded, he grew to love his outdoor life with a passion that remained forever.

Developed Into a Naturalist
Simultaneously his rambles and rides developed an early interest in animals, birds, plants, all growing things, which in time was to assume an importance in his mentality second only to his love of political life and was to make of him a naturalist.

The fight for health lasted for years. The winter of his childhood spent on the Nile partly rid him of the asthma, but it was not until he had lived in the West that the disease left him. Besides his bodily weaknesses he was very near-sighted.

In Roosevelt's boyhood home, under the discipline of his father, there was plenty of time for play, but none for idleness. If he was not strong, he was at least all boy, if we are to accept the description of one of his earlier intimates, the Long Island stage driver on whose front seat "Ted" frequently rode.

"He was a reg’lar boy. He was allus outdoors climbing trees and goin' bird nestin'. I remember him partic'lar like because he had queer living things in his pockets.''

The child was indeed father to the man, and many of the tastes acquired in boyhood remained with him to the end, in a highly developed and specialized form.

Weakness so often interrupted the studies of the young Theodore that he took no pleasure in the competition of the schoolroom, although the records of the public school, which he attended for a time, give him 97 in geography, 96 in history, and 98 in rhetoric. His 86 in spelling was pretty good for a spelling reformer. It is remembered by his teachers that he was strong for composition and declamation and that he had uncommon skill in map-making. His schooling, however, was necessarily irregular, and he was prepared for college by a private instructor.

His Early Democracy
When Theodore was about ten years old his parents took a house overlooking the Hudson River in Dobbs Ferry for a summer. The property is known as the Paton place, and its association with the Roosevelts has been a source of pride to the older people of the pretty village opposite the Palisades.

Theodore is remembered by Dobbs Ferry men who were boys with him as small of stature for his years and inclined to be delicate. They remember also that the force of character, courage, and democracy that later became dominant characteristics were noticeable in his dealings with his companions. Unlike the other youths of prominent families that lived on the big estates along Broadway, from the first days of his family arrival he took part with energy in the boyish enterprises of those among whom he found himself. He was usually to be found with a crowd of boys on expeditions to the Saw Mill Eiver to swim and fish, and on these hikes, though many were bigger and stronger than he, none outdid him in endurance.

Roosevelt's particular pal among the boys was John MacNichol, and the friendship of the two lasted until the day of the Colonel's death, when MacNichol told how he came to be the friend of Roosevelt's Dobbs Ferry days.

Roosevelt, assertive in what he believed to be right, quarreled with two other boys of the "gang." Both of the other boys were bigger than Roosevelt, but he had raised his arms and was awaiting the onrush of the two when MaeNichol arrived. MacNichol, who was strong for his age, took Roosevelt's part and his two foes called off the impending fight.

In later years MacNiehol became the village blacksmith. While he was hammering at his anvil his old friend was mounting to the great position he attained. Roosevelt did not forget his old friend, and on the not infrequent occasions when he passed through Dobbs Ferry after automobiles made Broadway along the Hudson a popular highway, he always stopped at MacNichol's shop for a chat.

When the former President died, MacNichol showed a memento which he cherishes most highly. It is a letter on White House stationery from President Roosevelt, thanking him for a horseshoe which the blacksmith had fashioned with particular care.
Two Trips to Europe
The young Theodore was taken to Europe in 1869 in the hope that it would benefit his health. "A tall, thin lad with bright eyes and legs like pipe stems," is the memory picture drawn by one who was a playmate of his on the ship. Again, in 1873, he crossed the seas and went to Algiers, for his weakened lungs were giving his family some concern and the warm African air was sought as a balm for them. By President Grant's appointment, his father was the American commissioner to the Vienna Exposition in that year, and Theodore, with his brother Elliott and sister Corinne, now Mrs. Douglas Robinson, were brought from Algiers to Dresden, in Germany, where they were placed in the home of a tutor.

This tutor interested Theodore, because he was an old revolutionist of 1848 and had suffered in prison for German liberty. He was, moreover, a member of the German parliament or reichstag in 1873. It is recalled in this family that their young American guest was an eager and enterprising student, but not a brilliant scholar. Nevertheless, one member of the household lived to vow that she predicted then that he would be President of the United States. '.'He seemed to pick up things, one did not know how." He delighted in the German classics and laid the foundation for speaking German well, although his asthma, while in Dresden, made an uninterrupted conversation by him very difficult. All the while, however, he was fighting for health and strength with all the determination of his nature and an indomitable will to succeed, as he ultimately did.

He took drawing lessons in Dresden and showed an unusual interest in natural history, the pursuit of which took him outdoors. When the Roosevelts were leaving Dresden for Switzerland, it was found that Theodore's trunk was so filled with the stones he had collected that he had discarded some of his clothing. His mother thought it better to leave the stones than the clothes, but as fast as she threw them out of the trunk, the young disciple of Nature picked them up and, truly boy like, put as many of them as he could in his pockets.

Dresden always remained a happy memory to Mr. Roosevelt, and just before entering Harvard he wrote to his old friends in Germany: "I shall not go into business until I have passed through college, which will not be for four years. What business I shall enter then I do not know." He did not need to cross the bridge until he came to it.

He had won the battle of his boyhood. He had vanquished the enemy of ill-health and was ready to play a man's part in life. "I made my health what it is," he once said. "I determined to be strong and well and did everything to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard I was able to take part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred and I ran a great deal, and, although I never came in first, I got more out of the exercise than those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself."

Felt the Unity of the Nation
Intellectually and morally, Theodore Roosevelt inherited much from his progenitors. Born just before the Civil War of a Northern father and a Southern mother, both sympathizing with their native section of the land, he came naturally by his strong feeling that all sections of the country were coherent as a nation. This feeling was strengthened by his intimacy with the West and increased by his utter familiarity with the East.

To this feeling may be traced his well-known conviction for Federal centralization, perhaps one of the strongest of his convictions. His pronounced feeling for the South is also traceable to his pride in the family of his mother.

"He got," so it has been said, "his love of a scrap from the Irish in him, his volatility from the French, his wariness from the Dutch, and his frugality from the Scotch."