Eleanor Butler Roosevelt

Eleanor Butler Alexander Roosevelt (December 26, 1888 – May 29, 1960) was an American philanthropist. She was the wife of General Theodore Roosevelt III, and a daughter-in-law of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States.

Eleanor Butler Roosevelt
Born
Eleanor Butler Alexander

(1888-12-26)December 26, 1888
New York City, U.S.
DiedMay 29, 1960(1960-05-29) (aged 71)
Oyster Bay, New York, U.S.
Resting placeYoungs Memorial Cemetery, Oyster Bay, New York, U.S.
Political partyRepublican
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1910; died 1944)​
Children
Parents
  • Henry Addison Alexander (father)
  • Grace Green (mother)

Early life

Eleanor Butler Alexander was born on December 26, 1888, in New York City, the only daughter of Henry Addison Alexander, a prominent New York lawyer, and Grace Green. She was a great-granddaughter of the late Theron Rudd Butler.[1] Her great aunt was Eleanor Butler Sanders.[2]

Career

Throughout her life, Roosevelt not only supported her husband's career but also proved a highly organized, socially conscious person in her own right. From July 1917 to December 1918, she was heavily involved in YMCA canteen work in France[3] and was described by her fellow canteen worker Marian Baldwin as "working like a horse."[4] She helped improve the conditions of Puerto Rican women while her husband was governor of the island (1929–31); she organized the first American women's committee for China Relief (1937); and she directed the American Red Cross Club in England (1942). Roosevelt received citations and commendations from, among others, the French government, Gen. John J. Pershing, and the U.S. War Department. She also wrote an account of her life in her memoirs, Day Before Yesterday.[5]

Photography

Roosevelt was also a keen photographer. In 1986, her daughter Grace presented 25 of her albums to the Library of Congress together with some 5,000 of her own photographs, including images of presidents and international dignitaries. In later life, Roosevelt and Grace studied with photographer J. Ghislain Lootens. She used a Voigtländer Superb from 1935, developing her own film and making her own prints. Her travel photographs of Europe, Mexico and Asia are of a particularly high quality.[6]

Personal life
Eleanor Butler Roosevelt receives the Medal of Honor posthumously presented to her husband (September 21, 1944). From left: Gen. George Marshall, U.S. Army Chief of Staff; Gen. Henry H. Arnold, commanding U.S. Army Air Forces; Mrs. Roosevelt; British Field Marshal Sir John Dill; and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

On June 29, 1910, she married Theodore "Ted" Roosevelt III, the eldest son of President Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt Jr. and Edith Kermit Carow, in New York City at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church on 55th Street and Fifth Avenue (Manhattan). Ted was the only general officer to land in the first wave on D-Day and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Ted and Eleanor had four children:

She died on May 29, 1960, at Oyster Bay, Nassau Co., Long Island, NY, sixteen years after her husband, who had died of a heart attack shortly after the Invasion of Normandy (1944).

See also

Notes
  1. "MISS ALEXANDER ROOSEVELT'S BRIDE; Society Turns Out to Witness the Marriage of the ex-President's Eldest Son". The New York Times. 21 June 1910.
  2. "Out Town Hall". Newspapers.com. New York Herald. 23 January 1920. p. 8. Archived from the original on 2021-04-20. Retrieved 2020-12-05.
  3. "With the Women of Today". Grand Forks Herald: 6. 1 Jan 1919.
  4. Baldwin, Marian (1920). Canteening Overseas, 1917-1919. New York: Macmillan. p. 72.
  5. Ronald Tamplin (ed.). "Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. to his wife, Bunny". geocities.com. Archived from the original on 2009-10-26.
  6. Beverly W. Brannan, "Eleanor Butler Roosevelt (1889-1960): Biographical Essay", The Library of Congress. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
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