A Sickly Childhood Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 27 1858 His family lived in a luxurious luxurious home in a fashionable part of the city for the Roosevelts were wealthy and had a secure social position His father Theodore Roosevelt Sr was a noted businessman and philanthropist His mother Martha Bulloch came from a wealthy slave-owning plantation plantation family He had a sister Anna about four years older than he and a younger brother and sister sister Elliott and Corinne Teedie as he was called in his childhood Ellie and Conie were the closest of friends We Three are often mentioned in the diaries he kept as a child Teedie had weak eyesight and he suffered suffered from asthma almost from birth Many a night he sat propped up in bed gasping for breath Sometimes his father bundled him in blankets and took him for a ride in the carriage through the dark silent streets hoping that the gentle night breeze would give the child relief 12 Theodore Roosevelt
Early Life Education and Marriage This portrait of Theodore Roosevelt Sr Teedie’s father was taken around 1875 He was called Great Heart because of his kindness and generosity 13
Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site Theodore Roosevelt was born at 28 East Twentieth Street in New York City Located near Union Square Park the brownstone was home to the Roosevelts until 1873 when the family moved uptown to 6 West Fifty-seventh Street The Twentieth Street house was torn down in 1916 is This the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt at 28 East Twentieth Street in New York City as it looks today After Roosevelt’s death in 1919 the Women’s Roosevelt Memorial Association bought the property and built a reconstruction reconstruction of the original home Roosevelt’s wife and sisters decorated the home with furnishings and objects from the 1860s about half of which came from the original home The National Park Service acquired the house in 1965 and made it a national historic site which means that it has special protection protection It contains five fully furnished period rooms two museum galleries and a bookstore The collections housed at the site include some of Roosevelt’s manuscripts published books and articles photographs and letters and journals There are also collections of campaign buttons hunting rifles and taxidermy specimens 14
Early Life Education and Marriage The Young Naturalist He never went to public school For a time his aunt Anna taught him and he had private private tutors He became interested in natural history when he was a small boy although he was so nearsighted that he could study only the things he ran against or stumbled over One day he observed a dead seal in a fish market With a folding pocket ruler he made measurements of the seal and recorded them in a notebook He finally acquired the seal’s skull and with two of his cousins started the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History Their collections of bones stones dead mice birds frogs and other items were kept in a dresser drawer A maid once threw out a litter of mice He was most hurt as he wrote in his diary by the loss to Science oh the loss to Science One day he and a cousin were returning home from a collecting trip Their pockets were full and each boy was carrying a toad on top of his head under his hat Unfortunately they met a family friend on the street Good manners forced them to tip their hats and away went the toads 15
