Tales of Theodore Roosevelt - TR, Fascinating Relatives - Saints and Sinners

Thank you for joining us today. This is the sixth episode in the series, Tales of TR, offered by the Theodore Roosevelt Institute of Long Island University. Our speaker is Tweed Roosevelt, the great grandson of the 26th president of the United States and chairman of the newly formed Roosevelt School, which opens in fall 2021 at Long Island University. Today's episode is titled TR's Fascinating Relatives, Saints and Sinners. We invite you to watch previous episodes of our speaker series by visiting our website at roosevelt.liu.edu. During the presentation, please feel free to type in your questions into the Q&A or the chat box, which is at the bottom of your screen. Today's webinar will also be available on our website in the coming week. Now I would like to introduce my good friend and colleague, Professor Tweed Roosevelt. Well, thank you, Rita, and I'm delighted to see so many old friends again and welcome all of you who are new. It's a great fun to do this, and I'm coming to you from the wonderful island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. So today I have a that I think you're really going to enjoy. It will be a lot of fun. It's called, as Rita said, Theodore Roosevelt's Fascinating Relatives, Saints and Sinners. The Roosevelt family, like any other, is made up of a large number of ordinary people living ordinary lives. A few lived extraordinary lives. The most famous, of course, are the three Roosevelt's, FDR, TR, and Eleanor. But they will not concern us today, as they are so well known. Rather, we will focus much further out on the enormous family tree, where we will find, on remote twigs and branches, some remarkably interesting and colorful people. I recognize that by highlighting these, I can be attacked as a gossip. But who doesn't like amusing and juicy stories? After all, FDR loved it when he could find a spare hour or two during his busy time in the White House to listen to his daughter, Anne, retell gossip about the family and other Washingtonians. He could get away with it, so can I. So here's my plan for this afternoon. First, I'm going to tell you a little about the mysterious first Roosevelt's, Nicholas and his wife. Next, come some general observations about the family as a whole, give you some idea of what sorts of people the Roosevelt's were, and how they lived their lives. And then finally, I will tell you the stories of several of the many interesting saints and sinners. So let's get down to it with the mystery of the first Roosevelt's, Nicholas and his English wife, Janet. Very little is known about the first Roosevelt, not even the dates that they, not even the date they arrived in New Amsterdam. They first appeared in the town records in the late 1640s. We know that he was Dutch, and we think his wife was English. That alone make him, made him unusual. Apparently, came to farm, also unusual, as most of the colonists were only interested in making their fortunes and returning home to retire in Holland. For the most part, they were disappointed. Anyway, let's first go to New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement on the southern tip of what is now Manhattan. So first, the New Amsterdam settlement here, and I'll show you, here's a very old period map of the time, and this is the tippy-tippy bottom of New Amsterdam in, on the island of Manhattan. Here you can see, superimposed on an aerial photograph of the bottom of Manhattan, there's the old settlement. Clearly, the, there's a lot of landfill around, and it's tiny. Let me see if I can show you something. So City Hall is about here. This is, this is the Brooklyn Bridge. So you can see there's really very little there. Now, this, the village itself wasn't particularly magnificent, and here you can see sort of what it looked like. There'd been a lot of sewerage in that sort of little canal there. It wasn't a great place to live. So let's now talk a little about Holland and its colonies in the 1600s. This is a map of the colonies. Those in black are the Dutch colonies. Holland was the richest sort of, country in the world in the 1600s, and had the largest colonial system. It was extremely profitable, and they had some hugely valuable colonies, and those were out here in what's known as the Spice Islands, where all kinds of spices came, particularly peppercorn, which was extremely valued in Europe at the time because there was no refrigeration. And so if you wanted to be able to eat meat and other things that had sort of passed their expiration date, you needed to cover it with spices like pepper. And pepper was so valuable that it was sold ounce for ounce against gold. So this was incredibly a rich and ambitious time, and anybody who had any ambitions or talents would want it to go out to these Spice Islands. And for Holland, they were able to build a beautiful city like this in Amsterdam and many others, and the citizens were extremely wealthy. Here's a collection of them. First of all, you had to be rich enough to be able to afford to pay a painter to do this, and then look at all the goodies they had. They're very well dressed, lots of sumptuous things. They were really showing off here. But this was not true in New Amsterdam. Now, New Amsterdam really had very little to offer the colonists. Anyone with any ambition or talent avoided it, and the result was that, like many frontier towns, most of the residents were a little sketchy. People came for all kinds of reasons, and often they were not forthcoming about their backgrounds. It was not wise to be overly curious, so people just didn't ask. Nicholas may well have been one of these people. Perhaps it was debts, maybe a shrewish wife, or maybe even the law, or possibly all three. So, where did Nicholas and Janet come from? Nothing is definitively known. He just suddenly appears in the record. Although extensive research has been done, no definitive answers have been found. The result is that we only have theories, and it is in the nature of things that people like to elevate their ancestors, and certainly many generations of Roosevelts were guilty of just that. But when you take a hard look, there's no real evidence to support any of the many theories. The most popular is that they came from some kind of gentry in Holland, and there's some rather flimsy evidence to support this, but I doubt it, and I have a theory of my own. Perhaps he didn't come from Holland at all. Let's again look at the map of the Dutch colonies, and I want to call your attention down here. This was controlled by Portugal. It's now Brazil, and Portugal in the early 1600s had a huge swath of land, because the Pope had given everything east of a windmill or something like that, but they hadn't the ability to protect it, and so there were some renegade colonies that formed, and one of them was this Dutch colony right here. It was illegal, and as soon as the Portuguese were able to throw them out, they did. And so, perhaps, you know, when you throw the colonists out, they have to go somewhere, and perhaps they came to New York, and perhaps that's where Nicholas and his wife, Janet, may have come with those people looking for a new home. Anyway, until something more convincing comes along, that's what I choose to believe. Now for an overview of the family in New Amsterdam. There is an excellent genealogy of the family compiled by Henry Hoff and others, and published in 1990 by the Theodore Roosevelt Association. It lists some 2,000 separate names, but since many names were repeated over and over, the total number of individuals is probably more on the order of 5,000. And furthermore, it's not just a list of names, but gives additional information about many of the entries. It is by no means complete, but what it has to tell us is quite interesting, and I'll summarize some of it. So let's start with a few words about marriage. For the first six or seven generations, almost all unions were Dutch. In my branch, Theodore Roosevelt's father, who was a seventh generation American, was the first to marry non-Dutch. Roosevelt's tended to marry well, often to wealthy and well-connected families. The next best thing, in their opinion, was to marry another Roosevelt, which an astonishing number did. A good thing, they said, because you could use the monogrammed towels and you could keep the money in the family. However, it gives genealogists migraines. So the Roosevelt's started going to college. The first Roosevelt to go to college was in 1789 when he went to Princeton. There's a Princeton about that time. A lot of Roosevelt's went to King's College, now Columbia College, but Princeton and Yale were early favorites because they were relatively nearby. There was a sprinkling of other schools, such as Union, Middlebury, and the two military academies, but in the long run, Harvard became the school of choice. There's an older picture of Harvard. T.R. was, as far as I know, the second Roosevelt to attend, and after that, the floodgates opened. The 1990 Harvard Directory of Living Ancestors lists 29 Roosevelt's, and no doubt includes many others whose family members with different class names. So now let's look at various occupations. First of all, most were businessmen. Roosevelt started out in real estate, and there was plenty of it. Here's the island of Manhattan. The red on the left, a tiny little bit, is New Amsterdam, and the island was basically forest and fields and so on. Of course, there were a few farmers, but mostly they viewed land as investments, and they owned large tracts of Manhattan. From real estate, the more successful branched out into selling both wholesale and retail, particularly hardware and other plate glass. A significant number became shipowners and captains and traded all over the world. From there, they went into finance, which is where most of the big money was later made. Family members were always among the rich, although never at the robber baron level. Part of the family, the Hyde Park branch that eventually produced FDR, were successful upper river landowners. The more ordinary family members went into a great many occupations, deliverymen, painters, glazers, liverymen, and the like, but most found more lucrative livelihoods. Some examples are silversmiths, chocolate makers, sugar brokers, molasses dealers, cigar factory owners, and many, many other businesses. It was a liberal sprinkling of professionals as well, especially lawyers and doctors, but also ministers. He might have been a Roosevelt, but I don't think so. Anyway, here's an itinerant minister they used to travel around with his prayer book, I guess. As time went by, the vocations became more exalted. Bank presidents, newspaper editors, directors of hospitals and museums, diplomats, and even a portrait painter. Many were politicians or in government service, starting out in town government as aldermen and later playing a role in the founding of the nation, some serving in the Continental Congress, and a few, sad to say, were Tories. Here's a Tory being tarred and feathered, I hope not one of our ancestors. In the 19th and 20th century, many were elected to state and federal office, and a number being U.S. representatives, judges, and the like. Also, as Roosevelt spread across the country, they became mayors and state representatives in faraway places like Vermont, Massachusetts, Miami, and even La Crosse, Wisconsin. A number held international posts, such as governor-general of Philippines, as well as ambassadors to a number of European countries, and even the UN. Apologize for my dog, he'll stop in a second. Of course, there were soldiers. Every war had Roosevelt's. Army and Navy at first, and later Air Force and Marines, both enlisted and officers, right up to generals and admirals. As a sort of a stand-in for the whole family, I want to talk about just a couple of Roosevelt's, and these are TR's children. Here he is with his four boys, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. there, my grandfather Archie here, Quentin here, and Kermit. It was a tight family, and of course, a militaristic one. So let me tell you a little about their services in the two wars. Quentin, I'll talk about first. He was the youngest. This is a sad story. He was the youngest in the First World War. All four brothers fought in the First World War. The other three were in the First Division, Big Red One, but Quentin was a pilot. He liked to fly, and so he joined the Army Air Corps, but unfortunately, pilots had very short life expectancy. Generally, something like, believe it or not, two weeks, and his fate was to be killed in a dogfight over Germany. His plane crashed to the ground. There it is. The Germans, of course, found it. They recognized who he was. They took his picture. This is kind of hard for me to look at, but anyway, he took his picture. There's his body lying in front of the plane. They turned it, believe it or not, into a postcard and mailed it to Theodore Roosevelt, his father. That was pretty tough. Anyway, let's move on here. Uncle Ted, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., as I said, was in the First World War in Big Red One. He was an officer. He was highly decorated. In the Second World War, he was in again. He's now, as you can see from his star, a general. He landed in North Africa, fought in Sicily, then up through Italy. Then he went to England, where he worked with Ike on D-Day. He told Ike that he thought that it wasn't right for the boys to go in on day one on D-Day without a general officer. Ike liked the idea. He looked for volunteers. The only one was Uncle Ted. He was very sick at the time and walked on a cane, but he agreed, and so he went in. He landed on Utah Beach. He was in the first wave. He was not only in the first wave, he was in the first boat. He was the first soldier on the beach. He stood there all day directing 30,000 troops coming in behind. Years later, Omar Bradley was asked about what he thought was the bravest act by a U.S. soldier, and he picked Uncle Ted on the beach. Uncle Ted was the oldest soldier. He was also a father and son team. There's his son, Quentin Jr., named after his uncle, who went in on Omaha Beach. Uncle Ted lasted a few more days, and then there was too much for him, and he died of a heart attack. So now we go to Kermit, the unfortunate Kermit. Sorry for him. One of the family problems is alcoholism. We're riffed with alcoholics. Of course, back then, nobody had any idea how to handle alcoholics, and Kermit was a serious alcoholic. He served at first in the Middle East, and then his alcoholism got the better of him. The Army sent him to Alaska, where I think he just became so ashamed of this that he killed himself. That was very sad. Then we go to my grandfather, also in Big Red One in the First World War. He was shot in an arm and a leg, almost died. He was invalidated out. In the Second World War, he wanted to be a combat officer. The Army didn't want to make him. He was partially a cripple at the time and much too old, but it helps to have a cousin in the White House. So he went to FDR, and FDR pressured the Army, and grandfather was sent to New Guinea, about the worst place he could go. He was shot in the same arm and leg and was invalidated out again, with the distinction of being the only soldier in U.S. history to be 100% disabled in two wars. Then the four boys had a sister, Auntie Ethel. Auntie Ethel was a wonderful lady, but she was a lady and she couldn't join in the Second World War. But she and her husband, who was a doctor, she joined the Red Cross as a nurse, and they were in France for most of the war taking care of soldiers. So that'll give you an idea of Roosevelt's. There were many, many, many others, and I just use that as an example. So now it's time to look at some saints and sinners. The first saint was Isaac Roosevelt, known as the Patriot. He was a fourth-generation American, and he was the first of the family to make it really big. Isaac was one of the first to build a refinery to convert molasses to sugar, and this was a very profitable business. Soon Isaac became one of the richest men in New Amsterdam. He branched out into banking and co-founded, along with Alexander Hamilton, the Bank of New York, which still exists today. After Hamilton, he was the bank's second president. He was also one of the first Roosevelts to become a public benefactor, being a founder of the first public hospital in New York in 1770, and he founded the Chamber of Commerce. This success made him an unlikely supporter of the Revolution. Most of the rich were Tories, and at first he was a moderate, hoping to avoid war, but when he believed that was impossible, he went all in. He was elected to the New York Provincial Congress in 1775, and shortly after as a member of the Committee of 100 that took over control of the colony. When the British occupied Manhattan, he decamped upstate and served in the 6th Regiment of the State Militia, but he was not destined to be a soldier, but rather to engineer the financing of the Revolution. Not easy, but with Hamilton, they managed to pull it off. After the war, he was an ardent supporter of the Constitution, along with Hamilton and Robert Livingston, and he took part in the New York Ratification Convention, which turned out to play a pivotal role in the eventual success of one of the most important events in American history. So now we'll look at another, and this is Nicholas Roosevelt and his extraordinary wife Lydia, Lydia Latrobe, the family is still known as Steamboat Nicholas. He met his future wife when she was 13, and he was 37. She was the daughter of his business partner, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the architect of the U.S. Capitol in Washington and many other buildings. Nicholas, who after all was a Roosevelt, immediately discussed marriage with Lydia, and she seemed to reciprocate. Her parents were not wild about it, but for four years later when she was 17, the two were married. Now let me tell you a little about Nicholas. He was an inventor and was interested in steam engines, particularly as they might be used in boats. Another partner in his venture was Robert Livingston, one of the drafters of the Constitution. So he invented the mechanism which made possible side wheelers for steamboats, and he became partners with Robert Fulton, who is generally considered the inventor of the steamboat. He wasn't. Nicholas was. At least that is what the family believes, and nothing you say will change my mind. So now let's get to the most interesting part of the story. Fulton was interested in the Hudson, but Nicholas, who is much more farsighted, saw the potential for steamboats on the Mississippi. To prove it feasible, he and Lydia proposed to take a flatboat from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, a very dangerous venture in 1809, which would take a month or more. There were few towns, really villages, along the way. Louisville, St. Louis, and Natchez being the largest. Most of the way the banks were lined with virgin forests. So Lydia wanted to take a, they were going to take what's called a flatboat. This is what the typical flatboats on the Mississippi at the time looked like, very primitive. She decided that she wanted something better, so she herself designed a boat for them. It was big enough to have an owner's cabin, a dining room, living room, a pantry, and a room forward for the crew, which by the way consisted of a pilot, really a captain, three deck hands, and a male cook, and Lydia's maid. Part of the deck was open air space for evening drinks and fishing chairs. The upper reaches of the Mississippi had never seen anything like it. In spite of the comforts, the journey was going to be very challenging and dangerous. To start with, Lydia, believe it or not, was nine months pregnant. The good ladies of Pittsburgh were horrified she would even consider taking such a dangerous voyage, but she and her husband had formed a partnership and they were going to go down together. As it turned out, a baby boy, Henry, healthy, was born 10 days later after the start of the trip, fortunately when the boat was in Louisville. There were lots of problems and hairy moments involving Indians and near sinkings and formidable rapids. Look at those near Louisville, really very dangerous, but Lydia took it all in her stride and eventually they had to switch to a dugout canoe because the river was too low, and I'm talking about something like that. Theirs was undoubtedly longer in that, but that's what we're talking about. For days they survived in this miserable craft, baby and all, even sleeping in the boat's bilge with water sloshing around. That is until one night a large alligator tried to join them, but they beat it off. The alligator persisted for five nights until eventually the crew and the three Roosevelt's gave up and found whatever primitive lodging ashore as they could. That was only marginally more pleasant. Finally they reached New Orleans some six weeks after leaving Pittsburgh, proving that the trip could be done at least in a small boat, but this was just the first step. Nicholas now had to build a steamboat and the trip had to be made for real. There's the steamboat, which he optimistically called the New Orleans. This trip proved even more challenging and dangerous than the first one. Once again Lydia was pregnant, but this time she was encumbered with her toddler. At least there was more space, but anyone who's taken a toddler on a boat will know the stresses that creates. The local papers announced the departure of the New Orleans, as the boat was optimistically called, but all were convinced she would never be seen again and they were almost right. The biggest expected challenge was the rapids near Louisville, which indeed were daunting and they barely made it, but the more dangerous events were entirely unexpected. First of all, there was a bright meteor appeared in the sky, which they interpreted as a bad omen and they were right. A few hours later, on December 16th, 1811, the largest earthquake ever east of the Rockies struck with the epicenter only a few miles away. It was 10 times the size of the San Francisco earthquake, and I think it was 03, and it was so powerful it rang church bells all the way to Boston. The destruction was enormous, although not as much as it might have been because of course it wasn't very largely inhabited there, and then the river became as rough as the Atlantic during the hurricane. The New Orleans almost went down, but heroic efforts on the part of all aboard saved her. One can only imagine how the pregnant mother must have felt. Even after the river calmed down, their troubles were not over. The pilot's knowledge was useless as the riverbed was completely changed. However, good luck and still got them through, and they made it to New Orleans. This was the beginning of the river trade, which was so important to Midwest futures prosperity, and all due to steamboat Nicholas and his extraordinary wife. If I had a chance of meeting one or the other of these two, I have no doubt it would be Lydia. So now we come to the first sinner, James I. Roosevelt. First of all, he was a Democrat, almost unique among Roosevelt's. Far worse, he was a leading member of the deeply corrupt Tammany Hall gang, which TR was to battle so bitterly years later, and he was, God forbid, a supporter of the hated Andrew Jackson. I don't think I've ever heard him mentioned in the family. Tammany got him elected first as alderman, and then as a member of the state assembly. He went on to the U.S. Congress, and then a judge, first as New York Supreme Court, and then the highest court in the state, the State Court of Appeals, always doing Tammany's bidding. Eventually, he retired to a farm upstate, but not soon enough as far as his embarrassed relatives were concerned. The less said about him, the better. So let's move on to the first saint. Any Catholic will know her as she is the first American-born saint, Ann Seton, eventually known as Mother Seton. She was born in 1774 to an upper-class New York family whose antecedents arrived on the island in the early 1600s. Her father, Dr. Richard Bailey, was a prominent surgeon who was a descendant of French Huguenots who, of course, hated the Catholics who had remorselessly persecuted their ancestors. This view came down to my father, by the way. He didn't mind Catholics, but he didn't like the church. The good doctor, aside from his regular practice, was the chief health officer of New York, and he was also the first professor of anatomy at Columbia College. Ann was an intelligent and talented young lady. She was a fine musician, an accomplished horsewoman, a lover of poetry, and she spoke fluent French, an uncommon achievement at the time. At 19, she married a wealthy businessman, William Seton, who was in the import trade and was a descendant of an impoverished Scottish nobleman. They attended Trinity Church in New York, Episcopal Church. Her husband was well-traveled in Europe and, oddly, brought the first Stradivarius violin to America, to the delight, no doubt, of his musical life. Together, they had five children and took in six other relatives who'd lost their parents. Ann was very concerned about the poor and the disadvantaged and spent much of her time helping them. Tragedy struck. First, her husband's business failed as a result of the French and English wars in Europe, and he went bankrupt. They lost their house and had to travel and had to live in reduced circumstances. Then, her husband, who had suffered for years from tuberculosis, was advised to go abroad. He took his family to Italy, where he soon died, and in Italy, Ann became enamored with the Catholic Church, and when she came back to the United States, she joined the still tiny group of American Catholics. The Church became the focus of her life, but good works were numerous. She founded and ran a Catholic school and eventually grew into the huge Catholic parochial school system. She also founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, which by 1830 ran orphanages schools as far west as Cincinnati and New Orleans and established the first hospital, there it is, west of the Mississippi. Today, six separate religions organizations trace their roots to her efforts. Mother Seton was canonized in 1975 by Pope Paul VI. So now let's turn to TR's favorite uncle, Robert Barnhill Roosevelt, known in the family as RBR, and he's a combination. He was both a saint and a sinner. As a young man in his 20s, he was quite a ladies' man. His taste ran to showgirls and dancers, and they were no doubt bowled over by his status and money. To each new conquest, he would give the same pair of unusual lavender-colored gloves. The society ladies of New York soon knew what it meant if they spied some young lady sporting a pair. Well, eventually, he settled down and got married, and this is when he started his good works. He was a very early conservationist and ecologist before the term was even invented. He was particularly interested in fish and knew that if they were to be preserved in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere, the environment needed to be cleaned up. He wrote several books on the subject and even got himself elected to Congress to further his ideas. TR idolized him, and he became a role model for TR's later success in this area. You can learn more about TR's development as an environmentalist. I'll write this down in my talk on Tuesday, March 23rd at noon, so I hope you all join me. So now to the sinner part. I know that's the part you've been waiting for. After a few years, his wife lost interest in him and the marriage and became an invalid, rarely leaving her bedroom. He stood for this for a while, but then branched out. He found a comely young Irish lady and set her up in a house a few blocks away. Over time, she produced three children, and he must have loved her because when his wife died young, he married her and they lived happily for the rest of their lives. He adopted his biological children. He kept the family name The truth of the situation was not known until quite recently. One of his children was Grenville Fortescue, known as Raleigh, and I should remind you that he was TR's biological first cousin, but TR almost certainly didn't know this. He went to the University of Pennsylvania and then enlisted as a private in TR's Rough Riders. For Mary Rose, he was a lieutenant in the 10th Cavalry, the all-black unit known as the Buffalo Soldiers. He served as an observer during the Russo-Japanese War and then for a time as a military aide in TR's White House. Then his life changed dramatically when he married the potentially very rich Grace Hubbard Bell, niece of Alexander Graham Bell. He keeps popping up. They lived as if they were rich, but the money would not come in for years. The marriage produced three girls, one of whom was known as Thalia, and she was to become infamous. She was a wild girl and when she married at 16 to a young naval officer, Tom Massey, she didn't change her ways. The couple moved to Hawaii where there really wasn't much to do but hard drinking and partying. Thalia was not popular amongst the Navy wise because first she let them know that she thought she was superior and second and much more importantly she was known to have dalliances with some of their husbands. Matters came to a head one night when during a drunken party she slapped one of the officers and left in a rage. Later that night her husband found her at home severely beaten. She claimed that she'd been gang raped by five native Hawaiians. What follows is a long story, but I'll try to be brief. Thalia more or less randomly fingered five young Hawaiians who were arrested, tried, but not convicted. The lack of conviction so enraged Thalia's mother, there she is, when she arrived on the island, that she convinced her son-in-law and two Navy sailors to help her kidnap and kill one of the supposed perpetrators, a guy named Joseph with the name of unpronounceable Hawaiian last name. There he is, he was a famous boxer at the time. They were transporting his body in a car when they were stopped by police and arrested. Thalia's mother, Grace, does not look nearly so good in her mug shot. All four were put on trial, there are the four of them. The atmosphere on the island was toxic. Navy-civilian relations were at a rock bottom and racism directed against native Hawaiians was at a peak. The trial was the most notorious of the 30s, reported extensively not only around America but internationally, and the drama was raised tremendously when Clarence Darrow agreed to represent the defendants. There you see Clarence Darrow and Thalia and her mother. This was to be Darrow's last trial, and he did it solely for money, violating principles he'd developed over a lifetime of defending the underdog, many of whom were blacks. His reputation suffered, after all, he was defending people who had committed what amounted to be a lynching. But he needed the money and he was paid half a million dollars for six weeks work. I guess he thought it was worth it. At the trial, he argued that it was an unwritten law which allowed husbands to shoot their wives rapists. The jury didn't buy it and compromised by convicting for manslaughter. The uproar in white America was enormous, with even President Hoover weighing in, trying to get the governor of Hawaii to pardon the defendants. Sound familiar? The governor stood his ground, but eventually, just to get all the people back to the U.S. where he thought they belonged, he commuted, not pardoned, he commuted their sentences to one hour to be served in his office. Sentence was carried out and then everyone, including Darrow, got on the ship and sailed away. To show you how much this trial captured America's attention, here's the governor on the cover of Time Magazine. By the way, if this sounds familiar, it's because it was the basis for a book and a movie called Anatomy of a Murder. Here's a shot of the four lead actors, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick, and on the right, Ben Gazzara, all the way on the right, and then George C. Scott. It took years for race relations on the island to improve. Now I'll tell you about Hillborne Roosevelt, born in 1849. It was unusual that he was not interested in business, but was mechanically inclined and was particularly interested in, of all things, pipe organs and the possibility of operating them with electricity. He took out his first patent at the age of 20. He built the first electric organ in the U.S., which was eventually exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Expedition. I know you can't see it very well, but in any case. And he then proved that he did have some business sense as he, with the help of his brother, Frank, founded three successful factories which produced some of the largest organs in the United States. Here's one at the Syracuse Catholic Cathedral and is considered the finest organ in America today. Along the way, he got involved with Alexander Graham Bell, another one, invented several important elements of the telephone, including the switch hook and the bell mechanism. So now let's go to the Bullock brothers, either saints or sinners, depending on whether you are a Confederate or a Yankee. But first I want to tell you a story, and it's a little complicated, so you'll have to pay attention. In the antebellum South, in Savannah, there was a boy and a girl. They were something of an item and their parents thought they might marry, but true love is a bumpy road, and they broke up. The boy then went on to marry a Southern bell, and they started a family. The Southern bell had a widowed father, and much to everybody's surprise, the girl, you remember her, the girl, she married the widowed father, and they began, they began to have children. So now she was her old boyfriend's mother-in-law. Some time passed, and then tragically the Southern bell died, and shortly thereafter the widower passed away as well. And now the complex part, the boy and the girl found each other again, and they got married, and they had children. I defy you to tell me how these are all related. It sounds exactly like that old song many of you may remember, I am my old grandpa. I wish I had time to play it to you, but you'll have to look it up on Amazon. The good people of Savannah were perplexed by this new development. Apparently they decided there was something incestuous about the marriage, although there wasn't, and eventually the couple had to flee, and they took up residence in Roswell, a town near Atlanta, where they built a house on their plantation, which they called Roswell Hall, and raised their enormous and complicated brood, although the children thought nothing of it and treated each other as just a bunch of brothers and sisters. So now we come to the reason why I told you this story. One of the children from this final union was Mitty, who eventually became Theodore Roosevelt's mother, and her two stepbrothers, who were offsprings of the girl and the widower, were the Bullock brothers, James and Ernie. They were both major players in the Civil War on the Confederate side. James, the older, was head of the Confederate Secret Service and arranged for the building illegally in England of the two great Confederate commerce raiders, the CSS Alabama and the CSS Shenandoah, which caused such havoc to Union shipping. His brother Irving served on the Alabama as a young officer, and he fired the last shot before she was sunk by Union forces off the coast of France. Both brothers were refused general amnesty at the end of the war. Young TR idolized them, in spite of their being Confederates, and visited them often in England, and probably got For now, for a more modern center, this is another one of those complicated Roosevelt relationships. This is Tad Roosevelt, who was the son of FDR's half-brother. Therefore, FDR was his uncle, although he was a year younger. Fortunately, for the purposes of this story, that tangled relationship doesn't matter. Anyway, Tad's mother was an Astor. In fact, a daughter of the Mrs. Astor, the woman of the Select 400 fame. So Tad, therefore, started out rich and only grew more and more rich. At Harvard, he began to go downhill, as not infrequently happens. He spent most of his time in what came to be known as the Combat Zone, a place of dance halls and other scandalous pursuits. His girlfriends were not of the type his grandmother, Mrs. Astor, would have approved. However, instead of growing out of it, as most college sophomores do, he quit school and continued his bad behavior. Then the bottom fell out. He snuck down, he was in New York now, he snuck down to City Hall and married a Hungarian, of all things, a woman named Sadie Messenger. However, what was far worse, she was generally known as Sadie the Whore. As you might imagine, all hell broke loose. God knows what Mrs. Astor made of her grandson, but his annex must have caused her considerable embarrassment. And of course, the papers were full of the news. Tad's father, James, apparently took charge. To make a long story short, the family planned to buy Sadie off, but she proved to be a very savvy negotiator. One suspects she was not just a common street whore, but more like a courtesan from one of Puccini's operas. Remember, we're talking here about huge sums. The Astors were astronomically wealthy. First, Sadie got a judge to award her a temporary support of about $15,000 a month in today's money. Eventually, she accepted a separation, not a divorce, a separation settlement for what must have been an enormous sum. However, she didn't just fade away. She and Tad remained married, although they never again lived together. She must have been a constant thorn in Mrs. Astor's side, as she was very visible and now rich in New York. Eventually, Tad moved to Florida, where he became more or less of a hermit and spent his time tinkering with cars. Apparently, Sadie hadn't managed to bleed him dry, as for years, he was Florida's highest income taxpayer on the proceeds of his fortune, which were estimated, his fortune was estimated at a quarter of a billion, billion, not million, billion dollars. When he died in 1958, he left it all for the Salvation Army. You can bet they were happy about that. So now I want to finish with two extraordinary events, which if they had not happened, the 20th century might have been a very radically different. So let's start with a small dinner party hosted by Elliot Roosevelt, TR's brother. Elliot was something of a romantic and a bit of a matchmaker, and he decided that it would be a good idea to introduce his cousin James Roosevelt to a friend, Sarah Delano. James was a widower and 26 years older than Sarah, but oddly it worked. The two were married and they had one child. There he is, FDR. So not only was TR, would TR, I'm sorry, would Elliot become FDR's godfather, but also his father-in-law, because Elliot's daughter, Eleanor, of course, married FDR. Imagine what would have happened if Elliot had not had that rather strange idea of bringing those two together. There most likely would have been no FDR, and then where would the world be at? And so now let's look at another story. Briefly, it goes as follows. In the late 1600s, Scotland decided to get into the colony business and to carve out a small section of the Panama Coast known as Darien, I don't know if you see this well anyway, down around here. It was also known as the Mosquito Coast, which didn't sound like a very promising place to go. But anyway, the whole story is fascinating, but here we were only concerned with the resupply ships, three in number, which sailed to augment the colonists. On board were the Reverend Archibald Stobo and his wife and daughter. When the ships got to Panama, the colony had been virtually, they found the colony had been virtually destroyed, and there was nothing to do but to return to Scotland. But they were sailing under an evil star. Two of the ships, of the three ships, were sunk during storms in the Caribbean with the loss of all hands. The last ship, the Rising Sun, sailed on and stopped in Charlestown, in what is now, excuse me, South Carolina, to resupply, particularly to get water. Stobo, remember a minister, was invited to preach, so he and his family stayed the night when everybody else went back to the ship. That night, September 3rd, 1700, one of the most powerful hurricanes in history hit the shore. All the ships in the harbor were sunk, including the Rising Sun, which went down with all hands. So the Sobos became colonists after all, just in a different place. And eventually, his daughter married and had children, and many generations later, her descendant married a Roosevelt, whose second child was T.R. And incidentally, the Archibald names came down all the way in the family to my father. Imagine how history would have changed if Stobo had returned to his ship that night. So now I'll leave you with a thought, just think, if any of your ancestors made even the slightest alteration in their lives, then there is a good chance that you would not be here. But you are, which just goes to prove that even events so vanishingly low probability as your being here, do occur. So, so much for probability. And so now, I will exit from here, and we can, at least I'll try to, and we can have the Q&A. So are you there, Rita? Yes, I am. And thank you, Professor Roosevelt, for that wonderful and exciting presentation. Some of the questions we have, we have quite a few, but I'm going to start with, someone just asked that you clarify Ann Seton's connection to the Roosevelt family. Oh, it's a complicated thing. She was a distant branch member. She was actually an ancestor of FDR. And, you know, when you look at family trees, if you allow relationship as well, you should, through the female line, it's pretty well possible to connect yourself a long way out. My direct ancestors, through the male line, to colonial, you know, from colonial times, people I could theoretically be descended of, and anybody in the 11th generation, which I am, is something like 2000. But when you go through the female line, it gets to be in the millions. But anyway, I don't have on the top of my head the exact relationship, but she was a corollary ancestor of FDR. Okay. The next question we have is, how did TR manage or respond publicly to any type of family scandals, especially if they were brought up by the press? Well, kind of the worst scandal to begin with was Elliot, who I introduced you to his brother, who was the mother of Eleanor. He had the family disease, alcohol, and he was what my mother used to call a roaring alcoholic, basically out of control. And they had no idea then. They thought alcoholism was a moral problem. And so pretty much everything they did just made the situation worse. But TR was very, very concerned about his brother and all kinds of, it's a long story of institutionalizing him and breaking him from his family and various things he did. TR was not, you know, didn't want this to be public. But of course, because of his position, even then, it was reported in the newspapers. Of course, Elliot is a well-known New Yorker. They just made the best of it, and they did the best they could. But it was a great sadness to TR. And then when his son Kermit, as I've already mentioned, became an alcoholic, it just brought back that. It must have been very, very difficult. And again, because they had no idea what to do. Thank God we've gone a long way from that. Okay. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you, Tweed, because you are now the head of our new Roosevelt School, which is dedicated to preparing students for careers in international relations, diplomacy, leadership, and service. And the school is inspired by the legacies of your great-grandfather, President Theodore Roosevelt, and also Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the former First Lady Eleanor. So the question we get asked the most is, do the Roosevelt's of Oyster Bay and the Roosevelt's of Hyde Park, how do they pronounce the family name? Do they do it differently? Well, first, let me just say a few words about the Roosevelt School. I'm really very proud of it. It's a big deal, and it's part of LIU, Long Island University. We're hoping to play a major role in international and domestic policy areas, and particularly in leadership and other things. And we're beginning to put together all kinds of exciting things. One of them may be a relationship we're establishing with educators and others in Japan to try to better American-Japanese relations, and many things like that. We'll have students, undergraduates, and graduates. Our students will go into such things as, of course, the foreign service area, foreign service, or international business, or NGOs, and also, of course, domestic politics. So it's really exciting, and we're just getting started, and stay tuned. Now, as to the pronunciation of the name, everybody says Roosevelt. Everybody says the idea. Some people seem to think that the FDR say Roosevelt, and the TR say Roosevelt. It's a Dutch name, and in Dutch, two O's is O, not oo, as it would be pronounced in American. There is a wonderful letter written by RBR when TR was president, taking up the cudgels against a guy who wrote, decided to, who charged the president with mispronouncing his name. TR, he thought it should be Roosevelt. And RBR starts out the letter by saying it's a brave man that tells another man how to pronounce his own name, and goes on from there. I'll post it on the website later. And then along the same lines, you mentioned the Dutch ancestry. We have a question. Did your ancestors speak only English, or did they speak a mixture of English and Dutch? Good question. Good question. The Dutch were very proud of their language. They tend to speak lots of different languages, and in fact, New Amsterdam at the time was just as diverse in background as it is today. I think there was something like 17 languages spoken there. But the New Amsterdam Dutch spoke Dutch all the way down to TR, who was what? Ninth, I think eighth generation, all the way down to TR. TR was, they spoke English too, but they, in the home and wherever they were, they spoke Dutch. And the colony was run in Dutch. So it really wasn't until the middle 1800s that they switched to English. And by that time, the English had controlled the colony for some time. Well, thank you for that answer. Who is your most amusing, who do you think is your most amusing relative? Oh, that's quite a question. The Roosevelt's have senses of humor, most of them. And so, and they tend to be wry. They're not of the jokes variety. They're sort of ironic and often wicked. One of my favorite is Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who was my great aunt. And she was known to have a wicked sense of humor. She was a very interesting, powerful lady in Washington, Ron Don. And she came, she came up with all kinds of wonderful one-liners. One of my favorite, several of my favorites, Dewey, you know, ran for president. She once referred to him as, he looks just like the man on the wedding cake. And her opinion of Coolidge wasn't much better. What she said about Coolidge was that he looked like he was weaned on a pickle, which I think is pretty good. One of her favorite aphorisms was, if it's empty, fill it. If it's full, empty it. And if it itches, scratch it, which I always thought was pretty good. And one of her most famous was she had a little pillow that she had next to her all her life. And the pillow said, if you don't have anything nice to say about somebody, come here and sit next to me. So I really, I really thought she was a lot Thank you for that. We're pretty much running out of time here. We, there's too many questions that I'm going to have to, we're probably going to have to answer and later put on our website. So I think this is a good time to just let everyone know that this session is being recorded and it will be available on our website, which is liu.roosevelt.edu. And all of the previous episodes are available on our website. And as Tweed mentioned before, we do hope that all of you will sign up for our next talk, which is titled TR The Conservationist, which will be held on Tuesday, March 23rd at 12 noon, Eastern Standard Time. I know we have a few people in different time zones on with us today. And Tweed, is there any other? By the way, not just a few time zones. I know we, I have followers in Australia and Europe, even the Middle East. So everybody comes from all around. I feel sorry for people where it's the middle of the night now, but I do hope you'll join me next month. And I really appreciate you being at this. I think it's been a lot of fun and I look forward to seeing you next month. So goodbye, everybody. And thank you very much.