Hall Roosevelt

Gracie Hall Roosevelt, generally known as Hall, was born on June 28, 1891, in Neuilly, France. He was a son of Elliot Roosevelt (who died when he was three years old) and Anna Rebecca Hall (who died when he was one-and-a-half years old). His uncle was Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and his grandmother was Martha Bulloch. Through his sister, Eleanor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was his brother-in-law, and through his father, his fifth cousin once removed. He was also the uncle of U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Elliott Roosevelt. He was named Gracie for his father's aunt, Anna Bulloch and her husband James Gracie,[1] and Hall for his mother's family.

Before his death, Eleanor's father had implored her to act as a mother towards her toddler brother, and it was a request she made good upon for the rest of Hall's life. After his father's death, Hall and Eleanor were reared by their grandmother at her estate in Tivoli, New York. While at Tivoli, Eleanor doted on Hall, and when he enrolled at Groton in 1907, Eleanor accompanied him as a chaperone. While he was attending Groton, she wrote her brother almost daily, but always felt a touch of guilt that Hall had not had a fuller childhood. She took pleasure in Hall's brilliant performance at school, and was proud of his many academic accomplishments, which included a master's degree in engineering from Harvard in 1913.[2]

According to his obituary in The New York Times, "even if he had not belonged to the nation's first family, he could have been justly proud of his career as an electrical engineer, World War flier, banker, financier and municipal official."[1]

After graduating from Harvard, Roosevelt began working as an assistant professor of engineering at a Harvard engineering camp in 1914. Later that year, he began working in the Yukon for the Canadian Klondike Company as an electrical engineer. In 1915, Roosevelt began his 15-year career at General Electric, a career he started and returned to after his service in the War.[1]

From 1929 until 1930, he served as executive vice president of Detroit United Railways and vice president of the American State Bank in Detroit.[1]

After retiring from public service, Roosevelt entered the private sector again in 1932, and served as a consulting engineer in Chicago, Detroit, and New York, until 1938. In 1939, he became vice president of the Commercial Investment Trust, Inc. in New York City.[1]

In 1912, at age 21 while still enrolled at Harvard, Hall was married to Margaret Richardson (1892–1971), a young woman he met at school. Margaret was the younger daughter of prominent surgeon Maurice Howe Richardson. Together they had three children:

• Henry Parish Roosevelt (1915–1946)
• Daniel Stewart Roosevelt (1917–1939)
• Eleanor Roosevelt (1919–2013)

When Hall wanted to seek a divorce in 1925,[5] it was only with Eleanor's approval that he followed through with his decision. In the late 1920s, Hall married again and found work in the railroad industry. Hall had three children from his second marriage to Dorothy Grant Kemp (1898–1985):[6]

• Amelia "Amy" Roosevelt (1925–1992), who married John A.F. Wendt (1921–2002), the brother of E. Allan Wendt, in 1958.[7][8]
• Diana Roosevelt (1927–1998), who married Agar Jaicks (1923–2016) in 1949.[9] Their daughter, Lisa Jaicks, married Peter Gabel.[10]
• Janet Roosevelt (1930–2020)

In 1937, Hall sought a divorce from his second wife. By this point, alcoholism, a problem he shared with his father, had come to dominate Hall's existence, and he was unable to hold down any job he was offered.[2] He spent the last few years of his life in a small building on the Hyde Park estate, and he died in Washington, D.C., on September 25, 1941, at age 50.[11][1] Roosevelt's funeral was held in the White House, and his body was transported to Tivoli, New York, where he was entombed in the Hall family vault in the St. Paul's Episcopal Churchyard.[12] Eleanor Roosevelt survived her brother by 21 years.[13]

• Roosevelt family

Notes

Bibliography

• Goodwin, Doris Kearns (1994). No Ordinary Time. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684804484.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hall Roosevelt.

• Beasley, Maurine, Holly C. Schulman and Henry R. Beasley, eds. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001, 458–459.
• Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One, 1884–1933. New York: Viking Press, 1992, 64–67, 139–140.