Theodore Roosevelt Senior was descended from a long line of Dutch New Yorkers who settled along the Hudson not long after the Pilgrims planted roots in Massachusetts. Well into the fourth generation, TR Sr. was a prominent and well-to-do member of the upper crust, whose glass importing business would insure a life of near-luxury for his family.
He had married Matilda (Mittie) Bullock, a Georgia belle, when he was twenty-two, and they would have four remarkable children: Anna (called Bamie by the family), Theodore Junior, Elliott (Eleanor’s father) and Corinne.
TR Senior: Devoted Father
Little Theodore unfortunately suffered from poor health nearly from birth, and by age three, was diagnosed with a severe asthmatic condition. A short life was expected. It would be his father who would spend his nights walking the floor with the boy in his arms, trying to ease the spasms. There were summer nights when father Theodore would take his boy for a carriage ride at midnight, believing that fresh air and the gentle jog might lull him into a restful sleep. Then there were the big black cigars that the five-year-old child was forced to smoke, since the doctors believed them to have curative powers. (TR, by the way, would be a non-smoker all his life!)
Little Theodore, like his siblings, was an exceptionally bright child with unquenchable curiosity and a voracious appetite for knowledge. Despite poor eyesight, he learned to read early, and by five or six, had developed a true and lifelong passion for natural history. With his father’s encouragement, he collected and catalogued everything: flora, fauna, rocks, birds, fish and insects, and by twelve, he was a bona fide taxidermist.
TR Senior: Committed Father
Because of the family’s considerable income, exotic travel was also on the agenda, and the young Roosevelt family was exposed to languages, cultures, history, experiences and seriously exotic flora and fauna that few of their peers enjoyed. Theodore the child would practically inhale the benefits from this broad expanse of knowledge, and developed a prodigious memory to summon it to the fore nearly at will.
As young Theodore approached puberty, still frail and puny and nearsighted, his father (an apparently robust man) said to him, “Theodore, you have the mind but you do not have the body. You must make your body.” Accordingly, he transformed an upstairs room into a mid-19th-century gymnasium, complete with assorted weights and barbells, punching bags and boxing gloves – and a 19th-century personal trainer to instruct. Thus equipped, TR (the one we know) embraced the strenuous life, and literally shaped up.
TR Senior: Exemplary Father
Physical training would be the second most important gift his father could give him – the first being the time, the care and devotion the elder man gave to his family. Perhaps the third most important gift from TR Sr. was his splendid example of a fine, upright citizen. A firm believer in noblesse oblige and that great privilege should engender great moral responsibility, he was one of the most generous men in New York. He supported dozens of charitable organizations and contributed to countless worthy causes. As a founding member of the Newsboys Lodging Home, he became a father of sorts to hundreds of young boys, usually orphaned, who hawked the city’s daily papers for pennies. He not only helped with funding, but he counseled the boys and even arranged for some of them to find opportunities “out west.”
About the only fly in this magnificent ointment of virtue, was his non-service in the Civil War. Theodore Roosevelt Senior purchased a substitute. Perhaps he believed that his wife and four children (all in frail health, by the way) needed him more. Perhaps he did not wish to risk facing his wife’s ardent Confederate family on a battlefield. Perhaps both. But it certainly was not from want of courage or commitment to the Union cause. He would serve on several civilian committees, and even was personally acquainted with President Lincoln. Theodore Junior was only a small boy during those years, but his father's non-service would haunt him all his life. Time and again he would place himself in harsh physical danger, challenging fate and testing himself to the limit, trying (as some psychologists claim) to rectify his father’s omission.
Shortly before Theodore entered Harvard, his father asked him what he wanted to do with his life. “Natural history” was the obvious choice. TR Senior was encouraging, assuring his son of his support and his belief that he would achieve great prominence in that field. But, he added, it would be a limiting life spent mostly in academic seclusion, and perhaps it might not be so appealing to his son’s ravenous disposition for adventure. With that admonition, Theodore rethought his future, and placed natural history at the top of his list of best-loved hobbies.
Theodore Junior was still in college when his father died. He had cancer, a secret kept from the family. He was only forty-seven.
Theodore Roosevelt never used “Junior” in his signature after that time, but he devoted himself to measuring up to those large footsteps for the rest of his life. He would meet,and indeed be one of the greatest men of his era, but he would always refer to his father as “the best man I ever knew.”
Sources:
- Brands, H.W. – TR: The Last Romantic, Basic Books, 1997
- Miller, Nathan – Theodore Roosevelt: A Life, Wm. Morrow & Co., 1992
- Morris, Edmund – The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan Inc., 1979
Feather Schwartz Foster - Feather Schwartz Foster, author-historian. Making the First Ladies come to life.
