Teddy and Eleanor: Roosevelt's marriage

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were married on March 17, 1905 — 120 years ago Monday — in New York City. She didn’t even have to change her name: It was already Roosevelt. She and her new husband were fifth cousins, once removed.

Both of Eleanor’s parents had died, so at the wedding, she was given away by her uncle, Teddy. Who happened to be President of the United States at the time.

A Match Made In ... A Family Gathering

Franklin Roosevelt met his fifth cousin, once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt in 1886, when her parents visited his parents at their estate in Hyde Park, New York. He was four years old. She was two.

At one point, Franklin’s prominent father took him to see President Grover Cleveland. Cleveland shook young Franklin’s hand. “My little man,” the president told him, “I’m making a strange wish for you. It is that you may never be President of the United States.”

Franklin would, of course, become president in 1932 and would become the only president elected to four terms in office. But we’re getting ahead of our story...

Franklin attended a boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts and then Harvard, becoming editor-in-chief of the daily Harvard Crimson newspapers. “I took economics courses in college for four years,” Franklin would say later. “And everything I was taught was wrong.”

Eleanor, on the other hand, was born and raised in Manhattan. At age two, she and her family were aboard the SS Britannic when it collided with another ocean liner and sank. She and her parents survived via a lifeboat.

Her mother died of diphtheria in 1892, when Eleanor was eight years old. Her brother died of the same disease the next year and then her father died in a sanitarium for alcoholics when she was 10. After that, Eleanor lived with her grandmother.

In the summer of 1902, the two cousins bumped into each other on a train. Each was smitten with the other. They began corresponding and then secret meetups. On Nov. 22, 1903, Franklin asked her to marry him.

The primary opponent to their union was Franklin’s mother, who felt the couple was too young for marriage — he was 21 and she was 18 — and that her son deserved a more prominent, more glamorous wife. She demanded the couple lengthen their engagement and keep their marriage plans secret. Her hope was to use the time to break them up.

That plan failed. Franklin and Eleanor were married on March 17, 1905, at the home of her aunt in New York City. Eleanor’s uncle, President Teddy Roosevelt — who was in town to ride in the St. Patrick’s Day parade — gave away the bride.

In The Family

Franklin Roosevelt was related to 11 U.S. presidents: five by blood and six by marriage and all but one — Van Buren — on his mother’s side of the family.

President #2 John Adams

#4 James Madison

#6 John Quincy Adams

#8 Martin Van Buren

#9 William Henry Harrison

#12 Zachery Taylor

#17 Andrew Johnson

#18 Ulysses S. Grant

#23 Benjamin Harrison

#26 Theodore Roosevelt

#27 William Howard Taft

Franklin was also distantly related to:

Robert E. Lee

Jefferson Davis

Douglas MacArthur

Winston Churchill

A Roosevelt Photo Album

Credit: FDR Presidential Library

Franklin was “handsome at the tiller” of his sailboat, Eleanor wrote in her diary in June 1903. Franklin wrote in his: “E is an angel.”

Eleanor shows off her wedding dress in March 1905. Her uncle Teddy’s attendance made the wedding front-page news.

Credit: FDR Presidental Library

By 1908, the Roosevelts already had two children. Here they are in 1908, with one-year-old James, left, and two-year-old Anna. They’d eventually have six children, but one died at eight months.

Credit: FDR Presidential Library

In 1910, Franklin was elected to the New York State Senate. Three years after that, he was named Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

The Amazing Career of... Eleanor?

Franklin’s political career took off. He was elected to the New York State Senate in 1910, became Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913 and then ran for vice president in 1920.

In 1914, Franklin began an affair with Eleanor’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Eleanor was livid and never quite forgave Franklin for the dalliance — or for the others that would take place afterwards.

They agreed to stay together for the sake of their five children and to not jeopardize Franklin’s political career.While vacationing at Campobello Island in Canada in 1921, Franklin was stricken with polio. He spent the decade keeping alive his political contacts while recovering and learning how to walk short distances with leg braces. Eleanor played a large role in his recovery.

Franklin was elected governor of New York in 1929 and then president in 1932, where he wrestled with the Great Depression and then World War II.

Eleanor, meanwhile, nurtured her public image as an advocate of democracy, women’s wrights and civil rights for African Americans. She became the first First Lady to holder her own press conferences.

In 1935, she began writing “My Day,” a nationally-syndicated newspaper column. She also began writing for Lady’s Home Journal, McCall’s and other women’s magazines.

Franklin was re-elected to office three times but died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945 — just three months into his fourth term.

Eight months later, Franklin’s successor, Harry Truman, appointed Eleanor as a delegate to the United Nations. She also served as the U.S. representative to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

Eleanor continued to write columns and magazine articles. She published 27 books over three decades. Eleanor died in Manhattan on Nov. 7, 1962. She was 78.

Credit: FDR Presidential Library