President f d roosevelt biography book

Before becoming historian-in-residence at Harvard’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation, you were the director of FDR’s Presidential Library, which is housed on his palatial neoclassical New York estate.

I want to begin by asking you about the roots and early years of America’s 32nd President.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in the Hudson Valley on January 30, 1882, on his family estate at Hyde Park. His mother Sarah Delano Roosevelt was 26 years younger than her husband James Roosevelt, Franklin’s father.

Franklin would be their only child.

President f d roosevelt biography book of life

His upbringing, as Geoffrey Ward—one of his biographers—said, was  “cossetted.” Roosevelt’s father’s ancestors were among New York’s old Dutch families. They came to Manhattan in about 1650. His mother was descended from old New England whaling and China trade families and traced her ancestry back to the Mayflower.

So the Roosevelts were part of America’s aristocracy. Franklin grew up in this v