Edith Kermit Roosevelt, born on this date in Norwich, Connecticut, became the second wife of President Theodore Roosevelt, serving as First Lady from 1901 to 1909.
Edith grew up in New York City next door to Theodore Roosevelt, and was best friends with his younger sister Corinne.
Edith, Corinne, Theodore, and Theodore’s younger brother Elliott had their earliest schooling together at the Roosevelt family home at 28 East 20th Street. Edith later attended Miss Comstock’s finishing school.
Edith Roosevelt
The Theodore Roosevelt Center reports:
By their teenage years, Edith and Theodore Roosevelt became so close that he may have proposed marriage. He called her the ‘most cultivated, best-read girl I know,’ but a rupture in their relationship occurred before Roosevelt left for Harvard College. Once there, he fell in love with Alice Hathaway Lee. Edith determined to be friends with both of them, even after Roosevelt married Lee in 1880.”
(There is some uncertainty on the details because Edith, to protect her privacy, destroyed her lifetime’s worth of letters from Theodore Roosevelt.)
Alice died in 1884, and Theodore and Edith got together again, marrying in London in December, 1886 and thereafter residing at Sagamore Hill on Long Island, New York. Edith helped raise Alice, the daughter of Theodore’s first marriage, and their own children: Theodore, Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin.
Theodore Roosevelt Family, 1903, via National Portrait Gallery
Theodore advanced in his political career, becoming US Vice President in 1900 and then President when McKinley was assassinated on September 6, 1901, dying on September 14. Edith was the first First Lady to employ a full-time, salaried social secretary. Her tenure resulted in the creation of an official staff and her formal dinners and ceremonial processions served to elevate the position of First Lady.
As the Roosevelt Center recounts, starting in 1902, Edith oversaw an important renovation of the White House. She worked with prestigious architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White to separate the living quarters from the offices, to enlarge and modernize the public rooms, to re-do the landscaping, and to redecorate the interior. Edith Roosevelt began the White House China Collection and the First Ladies’ Portrait Gallery. It was during Edith’s tenure as First Lady that the White House became known as the White House. Previously, it had been known as the Executive Mansion. Edith also spent a private hour each morning with her husband, talking over affairs of state and offering advice.
Edith Roosevelt in the White House garden she created
When the Roosevelts left the White House in 1909, Edith looked forward to a quiet retirement, but her husband was not the quiet retirement type. He embarked on an African safari, exploration of the River of Doubt, and a third-party run for a return to the presidency in 1912, inter alia.
On January 6, 1919, her husband died of a pulmonary embolism in his sleep. He was 60 years old.
During the Great Depression, Edith campaigned briefly for Herbert Hoover, to emphasize to confused Americans that the Democratic presidential nominee, Franklin Roosevelt, was not her son. She volunteered with the Women’s National Republican Club and the Needlework Guild. She died on September 30, 1948.
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