Eleonor Roosevelt

The 20th century was more than 15 years away when Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884. The Eiffel Tower hadn't been built, and the Wright Brothers had not yet constructed the plane they would fly at Kitty Hawk. People still lit their houses by gaslight and used horse-drawn carriages to make their way around the crowded New York City streets. Women wore floor-length dresses and could not vote.

Young Eleanor Roosevelt greatly appreciated Uncle Teddy's affection, for despite outward appearances, all was not happy in her parents' marriage. Neither Elliott nor Anna was well suited for parenthood, and despite the birth of two other children, both sons - Elliott, born in 1889, and Gracie Hall (known as Hall), born in 1891 - the marriage quickly deteriorated.

By the time Eleanor Roosevelt was seven, shortly after her brother Hall's birth in 1891, Elliott and Anna had separated. The separation, however, did nothing to decrease young Eleanor's adoration of her wandering father. His gentleness and deep, if undependable, love for her would leave an indelible mark on her life. To her, he would always be a very special person, the one that she had always loved the most, and the one person, until the time of her own death, that she had most freely felt love and uncritical affection for.

Now with just her mother and two younger brothers, it seemed to Eleanor Roosevelt that much of the warmth of her life had gone with the absence of her father. Although she was deeply fond of her younger brothers, her relationship with her mother was often uncomfortable and strained.

Left alone to raise her family, Anna did her best. What money could buy for the children it bought: expensive clothes, tutoring and vacation trips. But what it couldn't buy was repair for the loss of affection that Eleanor now felt in her life. Although Anna genuinely loved her three children, and tried her best to make up for the loss of their father, she was not able to establish the much-needed bond between herself and her seven-year-old daughter.

A stunningly beautiful and gracious woman, still very young, Eleanor's mother was a product of the late Victorian age, and she held on to many values of her social set that were rapidly becoming outdated. Remembering many years later in her autobiography, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, not without bitterness, "My mother belonged to that New York City society which thought itself all-important. Old Mr. Peter Marie, who gave choice parties and whose approval stamped young girls and young matrons a success, called my mother a queen, and bowed before her charm and beauty, and to her this was important."

Eleanor Roosevelt, with her increasing shyness, her strong, plain features and tall, gangly body, was a source of discomfort and concern to her attractive, feminine and socially adept young mother. Having inherited her father's sensitivity, Eleanor was quick to pick up on her mother's discomfort and explained her own unhappiness many years later when recalling the "curious barrier" that she felt existed between herself and her mother. As she recalled evenings with her mother sitting in the family parlor with her brothers or visitors, she wrote: "... still I can remember standing in the door, very often with my finger in my mouth - which was, of course, forbidden - and I can see the look in her eyes and hear the tone of her voice as she said: 'Come in, Granny.' If a visitor was there she might turn and say: 'She is such a funny child, so old-fashioned, we always call her Granny.' I wanted to sink through the floor in shame..."

And then suddenly in 1892, already shaken by the separation from her father, eight-year-old Eleanor Roosevelt experienced another blow. Her mother became ill with diphtheria. Within a few days, at the age of 29, the young and beautiful Anna Hall Roosevelt was dead. Unable to carry the responsibilities of raising the children, Elliott agreed to his wife's last wish and permitted Eleanor and her two brothers to be moved to the home of their maternal grandmother.