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Individual:
EDITH KERMIT CAROW, daughter of CHARLES CAROW and GERTRUDE ELIZABETH TYLER, residents of New York City's Union Square, knew Theodore Roosevelt practically from birth. As a toddler she became a playmate of his younger sister Corinne, the two girls had been born just seven weeks apart. Edith was born into an environment of breeding, comfort and tradition. But the family finances which would have once labeled them "privileged" if not "wealthy" became increasingly limited. Edith's father's battle with alcoholism, and inflation after the Civil War, changed the family's economic position, but not necessarily its social one. From the time Edith was six years old, she and her parents lived with various relatives.
Theodore Roosevelt's mother, invited "Edie" to join the the younger Roosevelt children for her earliest schooling at the Roosevelt home with Theodore's Aunt Anna, the Roosevelt children's governess. Edith also attended Miss Comstock's "finishing" school, appropriate and proper for a young lady of that era. Edith was a quiet and serious girl who loved books.
Throughout childhood Edith and "Teedie" had a special relationship. She was often Theodore's companion for summer outings at Oyster Bay, Long Island, though not by any means his only female companion. She was afterall three years his junior. But it was the name "Edith" that Theodore painted on the transom of his little rowboat the summer he was 16 and she a mere 13!
The close friendship survived through Theodore's first year of college and until the summer after his father's death. Edith and Theodore were very close and many expected they would marry. There is some evidence he may have proposed to her that summer of 1878, but whether she turned him down or they had some other disagreement, their relationship turned sharply and cooled for many years. Of their "breakup"Theodore would only say later, "we both of us had tempers...that were far from the best."
It was during this "cool period" that Theodore in his second year at Harvard College met and courted Alice Hathaway Lee. Edith attended Theodore's wedding to Alice Hathaway Lee in 1880 with his family and mutual friends. But their lives ran quite separately until 1885.
Theodore was reluctant to marry again after his first wife died. Though still quite a young widower, he felt it was immoral and disloyal to the memory of his dear first wife "Alice". Finally able to look forward again, Theodore and Edith were married in London in December 1886. Baby Alice came to live with them shortly thereafter.
They settled down in the house Theodore had built (originally for Alice) at Sagamore Hill, at Oyster Bay on Long Island, NY. This became the headquarters for a quickly growing family.
In addition to raising her stepdaughter, Edith gave birth to five children in the next ten years: Theodore, Kermit, Ethel, Archibald and Quentin. Sadly she also had several miscarriages. In the early years the young brood headed by Edith and Theodore were very close.While TR's relationship with his children is famous and exemplary for its day, Edith too was a loving and sympathetic (although not soft) mother. A small son remarked one day, "When Mother was a little girl, she must have been a boy!"
The tragedy of President McKinley's assassination brought Edith to the position of First Lady rather abruptly. But she was no stranger to Washington or the life of a political family. She played her roles well as her husband served as a Civil Service Commissioner, Police Commissioner in New York City, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the Rough Rider war hero "Colonel Roosevelt", Governor of New York and Vice President.
Assuming her new duties with characteristic dignity, Mrs. Roosevelt guarded the privacy of a family both from outsiders and even Theodore's extended family. In her book [1], Sylvia Jukes Morris quotes a classmate who remarked, "I believe you could live in the same house with Edith for fifty years and never really know her."
She was a very private person, finding solitude where others might have been lonely. Indeed she reveled in a level of solitude that to some bordered on isolation. However, her vigor of character, sound judgment, her practical and frugal management of the household and the family finances were her private strengths. Edith's presence was indelible and she was very much a force in shaping Theodore's outlook and actions.
She did make a public stamp. Under Edith's careful eye the White House collection of china and the portraits of First Ladies were begun. The task of restoring the house to its classic and simple federal style, inside and out, while accommodating a large family and executive branch of government for a growing nation came to the Roosevelts. First Lady Edith Roosevelt played the major role in overseeing the largest renovation of the White House into the stately and practical government center it is today.
The White House became unmistakably a social center of the nation with two bright lights burning. Obviously her husband Theodore energized both the country and any social event. And soon was the launching of his daughter, "Princess Alice" who captured the hearts and attention of the American press and public. Two family events were highlighted on the social scene: the wedding of "Princess Alice" to Nicholas Longworth, and Ethel's debut.
To this high profile family, Edith added the balance and careful consideration. The First Lady was, "always the gentle, highbred hostess; smiling often at what went on about her, yet never critical of the ignorant and tolerant always of the little insincerities of political life."
It was Edith who recognized the TR's need for a break from the frenetic pace of Washington and even Sagamore Hill. During the White House years she purchased "Pine Knot" a small cabin in the wooded Virginia countryside (Albemarle County near Charlottesville) with no running water or plumbing, but with plenty of the nature that Theodore loved. This became their "Presidential retreat"; this was where Theodore could find a change of scene after the intense negotiations of the Russo-Japanese Treaty at Portsmouth.
Edith was cultured, dignified, scholarly with a keen wit and love of poetry. Of the pair, Edith was considered the sounder judge of men and of money, providing a balance for her husband's exuberance.
After TR's death in 1919, Edith traveled extensively, including visits to Puerto Rico, Portugal and one to the Philippines when her son, "Ted, Jr" was Governor of those islands.
She made a few public appearances on behalf of Hoover as he campaigned against TR's cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although the rift between branches of the family was greatly overblown by press and gossip, this did contribute to some fodder to the idea.
It is a difficult thing for any parent to survive her children. Edith outlived three of her sons as well as her husband. Quentin had been shot down behind enemy lines and killed in WWI at the tender age of twenty. WWII again called her sons. Edith watched as Kermit sought and was occasionally given various posts including his final post in Alaska. And she watched with great sadness his fiercest battle, the same that her father had fought, the battle with alcoholism leading to Kermit's eventual suicide (although she was told he died of heart problems).
Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren gave her joy in her last years, but there would still be one more of her children to bury. "Ted, Jr", was by now Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr, and again in the thick of a World War. She was proud when he fought again in France, this time earning France's highest military honor, the "Legion of Honor". He was in the first boat to land on Utah Beach, the oldest man in the first wave on "D day". Ted's son, called Quentin after his uncle, also fought with distinction in that war. After several months of terrible and exhausting battle, Ted Jr. died suddenly of heart failure. He received the Medal of Honor, posthumously.
Edith also outlived the "other" Roosevelt President. According to Morris [2], "She was stunned. During the years of war she had changed her mind about 'Cousin Franklin' to the extent of saying that though he was 'on the wrong side of the fence' he was, nevertheless, ' a nice man,' who, to her satisfaction, had turned out to be as conservative as Alexander Hamilton, and as democratic as Lincoln. 'Could he but have lived until Peace,' she mused in her diary . . ."
She survived a broken hip, often a difficult ordeal, even more then than today. Her recovery was slow and coupled with watching Kermit's difficulties, only her will power and fond memories kept her from depression.
Organizing her death as she had her life she made her will almost exactly two years before she died, dividing the bulk of her estate between her natural surviving children Archie and Ethel or their spouses Eleanor (Ted) and Belle (Kermit). She left only a token amount and a John Singer Sergeant painting of the White House to Alice only because she had significant means from other sources. She also remembered her most faithful servants well and even left lesser amount to others who had severed her based on their years of service. She had done her estate planning well in advance, giving to her grandchildren well in advance of her death and thus avoiding inheritance taxes. She planned her own funeral service, and had had a plot put aside in nearby Youngs' Cemetery nearly forty years earlier. It was there that Theodore was buried, and there she would be buried beside him after she died on September 30, 1948, at the age of 87.
Sagamore Hill - Old Orchard Museum label copy:
* Little Edith Carow was well respected for her tidiness, a trait that earned her the nickname "Spotless Edie" from her childhood friend Theodore Roosevelt.
* The family finances were skillfully managed by Edith. In a letter to Theodore shortly before their marriage she had written, "Mama says I must tell you that I am very practical. I know a great deal about money."
* Soon after Theodore Roosevelt became President, Edith instituted the tradition of East Room Musicales in the White House. One evening in January 1904, the young Pablo Casals played for the First Lady during his initial solo tour of the United States.
* In 1902 Edith commissioned McKim, Mead and White to supervise the expansion and renovation of the White House. The distinguished architects obliterated the proud luxuries of the Victorian era and restored the classic simplicity of the early 19th century.
* Following Theodore Roosevelt's death in 1919, Edith traveled throughout the world as an honored and distinguished guest.
* Shortly after her 87th birthday, Edith died at Sagamore Hill. "Nothing," she once said, "would please me more than when I die they put this inscription on my tombstone, 'Everything she did was for the happiness of others.' "
More About EDITH KERMIT CAROW:
* Generally Edith refrained from public political involvement, however, in the 1930s she made appearances for Herbert Hoover and openly criticized the New Deal policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
* The first First Lady to catalog contents of the White House
* Began practice of hanging First Ladies portraits in the East Corridor of the White House
* Began the White House collection of samples of china used by all previous administrations
* Edith wrote a book on her family - American Backlogs: The Story of Gertrude Tyler and Her Family, 1660-1860 (1928), and contributed to Cleared for Strange Ports (1924).
Sources:
Theodore Roosevelt Association Office;
Sagamore Hill - Old Orchard Museum label copy;
Official White House Internet biography;
Betty Boyd Caroli, The Roosevelt Women, Basic Books, 1998.
[1] Sylvia Jukes Morris; Edith Kermit Roosevelt, Portrait of a First Lady; Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc. NY; 1980.
[2] Ibid., 511.
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