The family name
Roosevelt is an anglicized form of the Dutch surname 'van Rosevelt,' meaning 'field of roses.'[3] Although some use an Anglicized spelling pronunciation of IPA: that is, with the vowels of rue and felt, Franklin used with the vowel of English rose, and newsreels show FDR's tendency to use a schwa: often "rose-vult."[citation needed]
One of the wealthiest and oldest families in New York State, the Roosevelts distinguished themselves in areas other than politics. Franklin's first cousin, Ellen Roosevelt, was the 1890 U.S. Open Championships women's singles and doubles tennis champion and is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
His mother named him after her favorite uncle Franklin Delano.[4] The progenitor of the Delano family in the Americas of 1621 was Philippe de la Noye, the first Huguenot to land in the New World, whose family name was anglicized to Delano.[5]
Early life
See also: Roosevelt family and Delano family
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 in the Hudson Valley town of Hyde Park. His father, James Roosevelt, and his mother, Sara Ann Delano, were each from wealthy old New York families, of Dutch and French ancestry respectively. Franklin was their only child. His paternal grandmother, Mary Rebecca Aspinwall, was a first cousin of Elizabeth Kortright Monroe, wife of the fifth U.S. President, James Monroe. One of his ancestors was John Lothropp, also an ancestor of Benedict Arnold and Joseph Smith, Jr. One of his distant relatives from his mother's side is the author Laura Ingalls Wilder. His maternal grandfather Warren Delano II, a descendant of Mayflower passengers Richard Warren, Isaac Allerton, Degory Priest, and Francis Cooke, during a period of twelve years in China made more than a million dollars in the tea trade in Macau, Canton and Hong Kong, but upon returning to the United States, he lost it all in the Panic of 1857. In 1860,he returned to China and made a fortune in the notorious but highly profitable opium trade [6] supplying opium-based medication to the U. S. War Department during the American Civil War but not exclusively.[7]
Young Franklin Roosevelt, with his father and Helen R. Roosevelt, sailing in 1899.
Young Franklin Roosevelt, with his father and Helen R. Roosevelt, sailing in 1899.
Roosevelt grew up in an atmosphere of privilege. Sara was a possessive mother, while James was an elderly and remote father (he was 54 when Franklin was born). Sara was the dominant influence in Franklin's early years.[8] Frequent trips to Europe made Roosevelt conversant in German and French. He learned to ride, shoot, row, and play polo and lawn tennis.
Roosevelt went to Groton School, an Episcopal boarding school in Massachusetts. He was heavily influenced by its headmaster, Endicott Peabody, who preached the duty of Christians to help the less fortunate and urged his students to enter public service. Roosevelt went to Harvard, where he lived in luxurious quarters and was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. While at Harvard, his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt became president, and Theodore's vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model and hero. In 1902, he met his future wife Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore's niece, at a White House reception. (They had previously met as children, but this was their first serious encounter.) Eleanor and Franklin were fifth cousins, once removed.[9] They were both descended from Claes Martensz van Rosenvelt (Roosevelt), who arrived in New Amsterdam (Manhattan) from the Netherlands in the 1640s. Roosevelt's two grandsons, Johannes and Jacobus, began the Long Island and Hudson River branches of the Roosevelt family, respectively. Eleanor and Theodore Roosevelt were descended from the Johannes branch, while FDR came from the Jacobus branch.[9]
Roosevelt entered Columbia Law School in 1905, but dropped out (never to graduate) in 1907 because he had passed the New York State Bar exam. In 1908, he took a job with the prestigious Wall Street firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, dealing mainly with corporate law.
