The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [395]
124. Wag.69.
125. Amos, Valet, 151.
1: THE VERY SMALL PERSON
Important sources not in Bibliography: 1. Alsop collection of early Roosevelt family letters (now in TRC). 2. Union League Club of New York, Theodore Roosevelt Senior: A Tribute (privately printed, 1878, 1902).
1. The following account of TR’s birth is taken from a very detailed letter from Mrs. Martha Bulloch (Mittie Roosevelt’s mother) to Mrs. Hillborn West, Oct. 28, 1858 (Alsop).
2. Ib.
3. Ib.; also Morris K. Jesup, qu. Pri.4.
4. Mrs. Bulloch to Mrs. West, July 16, 1859; Put.23.
5. Put.23; TR.Auto.15.
6. Hag.Boy.21.
7. Put.33; Las.4.
8. Rob.4; Put.42–3; TR.Auto.12; News clip, n.d., in TRB, qu. TR “to a friend”: see also Rii.445.
9. Louisa Lee Schuyler, qu. Pri.10.
10. Emlen Roosevelt, int. FRE. (TRB mss.); Rob.5; see also Rii.447.
11. McClure’s, Nov. 1898; Rob.4.
12. TR.Auto.7–8.
13. Ib., 11.
14. Rob.18; Mrs. Joseph Alsop Sr. int., Nov. 22, 1954 (TRB). Lock of MBR’s hair in Alsop.
15. Elliott Roosevelt, qu. a Mr. James of North Road, L.I., in Eleanor Roosevelt, ed., Hunting Big Game in the Eighties (Scribner’s, 1933) 46. See also Par.26.
16. Mrs. Burton Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gay (NY, 1911), 278.
17. Mrs. Alsop int.; Rob.18.
18. See, e.g., Rob.18.
19. Roosevelt, Mrs. Theodore, Jr., Day Before Yesterday (Doubleday, 1959) 39.
20. The best Roosevelt genealogy in brief is Howard K. Beale, “TR’s Ancestry: A Study in Heredity” in N.Y. Genealogical and Biographical Record, Oct. 1954. In the fourth generation the family changed the spelling of its name (literally “field of roses”) and divided, one line leading down by way of New York City and the Republican Party to President Theodore Roosevelt, the other by way of the Hudson Valley and the Democratic Party to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mittie Roosevelt introduced FDR’s parents to each other; FDR was TR’s fifth cousin. The two branches, usually referred to as the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park Roosevelts, became politically and socially estranged in the early 1920s, despite the marriage of Eleanor of the former and Franklin of the latter. After half a century of family strife, which only Iris Murdoch could do full justice to, the two branches are now, in 1978, attempting reconciliation, and co-sponsoring the publication of a new Roosevelt genealogy.
21. Put.3–6; TR.Auto.1; Rii.435.
22. TR.Auto.1; words and music of Trippel, trippel toontjes in TRB.
23. Put.8–9. According to N.Y. World, Sep. 22, 1901 (?1907) clip in TRB, Mittie could trace her ancestry back to Edward III of England.
24. Put.8.
25. Emlen Roosevelt, int. FRE.
26. Put.7–9.
27. COW.
28. Bamie (pronounced “Bammie”) was also called “Bysie” and “Bye.” Corinne was sometimes “Pussie.” Elliott later became “Nell.” Theodore remained “Teedie” well into his teens, and then became “Thee” (his father’s own youthful nickname). For his love-hate relationship with the name “Teddy,” see text passim.
29. Mrs. Alsop int.; Put.51. Strictly speaking, Mrs. Bulloch and her daughters no longer owned slaves, since they had sold their Roswell, Ga., plantation before moving North in 1856 (Put.21). But, as TR (Auto.5) makes clear, at least two slaves at Roswell remained sentimentally attached to them long after the conclusion of the Civil War. “The only demand they made upon us was enough money annually to get a new ‘crittur,’ that is, a mule. With a certain lack of ingenuity the mule was reported each Christmas as having passed away, or at least as having become so infirm as to necessitate a successor—a solemn fiction which neither deceived nor was intended to deceive, but which furnished a gauge for the size of the Christmas gift.”
30. TR Sr. to MBR, Mar. 1, 1862, qu. Rob.29.
31. William E. Dodge in A Tribute to TR Sr., 17–18. See also TR Sr.’s “Journal” letters to MBR, 1861–2 (microfilm in TRB). It shows him leaving New York on Nov. 7, 1861, and being introduced to President Lincoln by John Hay the following morning. By November 14 he is working “from six in the morning to one at night.”
32. TR Sr. to MBR, Nov. 8, 1861,