Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an impressive woman in many ways. She stood at six feet. Her illustrious family background was long and established. Her husband was revered, as the president who saved American from the Great Depression and won the Great War. Unabashed she blazed her own path to immortality in helping to create the UN and advocating the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.. First Lady Hillary Clinton called Mrs Roosevelt, a “personal Inspiration.”
Read more: Eleanor Roosevelt: From Elite Background to Iconic First LadyBlue Bloods of New York
She was a native New Yorker, born in Manhattan to a pair of blue bloods.
Her mother’s ancestor, was Philip Livingston, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and thus considered a founding father of the United States. Another Livingston, Robert, (Peter’s first cousin) then Chancellor of New York, administered the oath of office to George Washington.
Her father, Eliot, the younger brother of President Theodore Roosevelt., was the scion of one of the original Dutch settlers, of Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt, a Dutch immigrant, who settled there sometime between 1638 and 1649. He purchased a farm in what is now Midtown Manhattan, where the Empire State Building is located. Clae’s son son, Nicholas, was the first to use the spelling “Roosevelt, ” and held office that help found Nieuw Amsterdam, as a separate Dutch colony.
Over time, the Roosevelt family broke into two branches: Oyster Bay on Long Island and Duchess County, Hyde Park. When she married Franklin she effectively united the two branches.
Unhappy Families
When Eleanor was eight years old, her mother died from diphtheria. Her father, a morose alcoholic, sent her and her two brothers to live with their grandmother, Mary Ludlow Hall. Less than a year later, her brother Elliott died also from diphtheria. Her father, devastated by these losses drank himself to death.
Only Eleanor and her brother Gracie Hall Roosevelt (she was named after the father’s aunt, Anna Bulloch and he after her husband James Gracie — but was called Hall) made it to their majority. The two remained close all there lives with Hall naming his only daughter after his sister. Like their father, Hall died in 1941 an alcoholic.
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