November 8-15, 1916
“I sent Anna Roosevelt’s Christmas check to Paris. $16.50 went out at 10:50 a.m.” Anna Roosevelt was President Theodore Roosevelt’s older sister and first cousin of Kate Shippen Roosevelt’s late husband, Hilborne Roosevelt. Fondly referred to as “Bamie,” short for the Italian word for baby, Bambino, Anna was the glue that held the family together.
Alice Lee Roosevelt
When Theodore Roosevelt’s first wife, Alice Lee, died of Bright’s Disease shortly after giving birth to baby Alice in 1884, Anna stepped in as surrogate mother, allowing the grieving widower the freedom to dry his tears with an extended trip out west to the Dakota Badlands. Little Alice Roosevelt often referred to her energetic aunt as Auntie Bye, because it seemed that she was always rushing here or there and biding everyone a cheerful “bye-bye.”
Kate Roosevelt’s nephew, Nicholas Roosevelt, the son of Hilborne’s brother, Dr. James West Roosevelt, said of Anna Roosevelt, “She had an extraordinary personality. Bamie had possessed the best mind in the family and the most varied and fascinating character.” Alice Roosevelt said of her aunt, “I always believed that if she had been a man, she, rather than my father would have been President.”
Alice Roosevelt
Born with a curved spine, Bamie was an old soul with wisdom and understanding that spanned far beyond her years. That is why all of her cousins and siblings respected her opinion about politics and often romance.
Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt
On matters of the heart, Hilborne Roosevelt often poured his own out to this wise woman. Shortly after establishing his famous Roosevelt organ shop on West 18th Street in New York City and obtaining several lucrative orders for his award winning instrument, the bachelor began considering the serious matter of marriage. For some time he had been courting a Miss Bulkley whom he had met at a dancing class in 1867. In the spring of 1873, Roosevelt proposed to her, but much to his surprise and disappointment, she turned him down. In a letter to Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt, he showed a stiff upper lip, though he alluded to the fact that she had “led him on” and questioned Ms. Bulkley’s morals. Additionally, he requested that the matter not be mentioned to his mother or other family members. His secret was safe with the sympathetic spinster.
Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands
Three years later, Hilborne Roosevelt picked himself up, dusted himself off and took his newest invention, the electric pipe organ, to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition where he won first prize. He was on his way to becoming a successful businessman as well as property owner in New York City and the beach town of Sea Bright, New Jersey where he purchased the Harmony Hotel. He spent many summers entertaining in the sea side establishment and one in particular, wooing twenty-eight year-old Kate Shippen, whose family owned a summer cottage, “the Anchorage” just across the street.
On November 1, 1882 he proposed and when Kate Shippen accepted, he wrote of his betrothal to Bamie, “I am in the most confused state of happiness.” The couple was married soon after. Anna Roosevelt was one of the bridesmaids. When her girlhood friend, Sarah Delano, married a distant cousin, James Roosevelt, in Hyde Park, Bamie Roosevelt was in the bridal party. Poor Bamie, always the bridesmaid and never the bride.
Henry Cabot Lodge
Even though she was the nineteenth century’s version of the twentieth century’s advice columnist for the lovelorn, Anne Landers, Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt did not find true love herself until she was nearly forty years- old. While visiting London she met an American naval attaché, William Cowles. Saving her from a life of spinsterhood, in 1895,she married the forty-nine year-old divorced man and gave birth to a son when she was forty-three years-old. Her brother, Theodore Roosevelt, was all for the union. He implied that her decision to marry was long overdue, “I always felt it a shame that you, one of the two or three finest women whom I have met or known should not marry.” Family friend, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, was not so enthusiastic and asked her, “Why on earth should you get married when you have Theodore and myself?”
Kate Roosevelt did not say in her diary why her cousin, Anna, was in Paris in November, 1916, but I knew from reading about the family, that the Roosevelts were frequent visitors to London and France.
But 1916 was not a time for casual traveling in Europe. World War I was in full force and the ocean was a treacherous booby trap fraught with German U-Boats ready to sink passenger and merchant ships. Under these circumstances, I was wondering if Kate’s Christmas gift arrived at all.
Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.
Photo One
Anna Roosevelt with her father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.
Library of Congress
Photo Two:
Alice Lee Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’ First Wife
Library of Congress
Photo Three:
Alice Roosevelt
Library of Congress
Photo Four:
Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt
wiki
Photo Five:
Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands
National Park Service
Photo Six:
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
Portrait: John Singer Sargent
Smithsonian Institution
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