The Rough Writer
News for and about the Volunteers at Sagamore Hill
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The Rough Writer is a volunteer newsletter, not an official National Park Service publication. It should not be used for historic research.
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“It is an utter absurdity, it is wicked to condemn a great law-abiding movement because there are a few elsewhere who do foolish and wicked things. As Dr. Shaw [President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association] said, apply to men that rule
―
that none are worthy of the vote because some of them are not
―
and there will not be one of us permitted to vote.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, May 2,1913
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It is hard for most of us to believe that we are now not only nearing the end of summer but also continuing to live in what seems like an altered universe
–
5 months and counting since we first entered the COVID-19 pandemic and began experiencing its attendant closures, social distancing, with virtual meetings, family parties and even happy hours taking the place of our usual more tactile existence. July was hot and dry, but while the TRH and Old Orchard Museum remain closed to the public, the good news is that the grounds of Sagamore Hill became a bit more user friendly with restrooms now available and rangers back to greet those walking the grounds, nature trail, and Eel Creek bridge.
We begin our August issue with a look at
Theodore Roosevelt’s evolving position on women’s suffrage.
August 26, 2020 is the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, and Natalie Naylor’s article provides some helpful insight into TR’s position on women’s voting rights as he approached the election of 1912. We also recommend
The Vote on PBS passport to get the full picture of the heroes of this struggle.
We also wanted to remind all of you that the
Friends of Sagamore Hill will be starting a membership drive in September. We are being asked to submit a name or names of anyone you know who has a love of history and would appreciate receiving information from FOSH to
Ginny Perrell. You can email Ginny at
foshobny@aol.com or call
516-997-5346. This important organization financially supports a variety of projects at Sagamore Hill that are not otherwise funded by the National Park Service, and FOSH continues to very generously fund volunteer activities. The
FOSH website is also worth a visit and a recommendation to your own friends who miss coming to Sagamore Hill. The site not only contains links to lectures about TR and a variety of educational opportunities, but also contains a virtual tour of the TRH well worth the 17-minute experience. FOSH is a vital component of the Sagamore Hill experience, not only for visitors from around the world but for you, the volunteers. Your help in the fall membership drive supporting the work of FOSH members will be tremendously helpful.
Staff changes: As you now know,
Jonathan Parker has been named Superintendent and will begin his duties as of August 31.
Alex Romero, who has shared duties with Sagamore Hill and Fire Island during this transition period, will continue as Acting Superintendent until Jonathan assumes his new position. Welcome back, Jonathan and thank you, Alex.
Nancy and Charlotte
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TR’s Stand on Women's Suffrage
by Natalie A. Naylor
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Colonel Roosevelt talking to the New York State Women's Suffrage Party at Sagamore Hill, September 8, 1917
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The Centennial of the 19th Amendment this month is an appropriate time to look at Theodore Roosevelt’s evolving view on women’s suffrage. The organized women’s suffrage movement in America began in 1848 at a meeting in Seneca Falls in the Finger Lakes region of New York. “It is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise,” was one of the resolutions adopted at that meeting. New York did permit women to vote in school board elections in 1880, an example of limited suffrage. When Theodore Roosevelt served in the New York State Assembly he voted for a bill extending partial suffrage, explaining that what “women accomplished with their school ballot in Oyster Bay” had impressed him.
In his first message as governor of New York in 1899, TR recommended to the legislature “gradually extending the sphere in which suffrage can be exercised by women.” However, it was not expanded during his term. He had written to Susan B. Anthony, “I do not attach the importance to it [suffrage] that you do.” Moreover he blamed the attitude of women for not getting all the rights they could get under the present laws.
When Roosevelt became president, Anthony and other suffragists sent letters, telegrams, petitions, and held private meetings with him, urging him to publicly support full women’s suffrage. He refused to do so, though he and Edith Roosevelt did hold a reception at the White House for suffragists attending the annual meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1904. Interestingly, Edith privately supported suffrage, but would not speak publicly for it before her husband did.
Susan B. Anthony repeatedly asked Roosevelt to support suffrage. She told him that it would earn him a place in history with Abraham Lincoln, comparing women’s suffrage to the Emancipation Proclamation. TR adhered to traditional Victorian views of women, seeing their primary role as wives and mothers. Suffrage was still a controversial political issue in the first decade of the twentieth century.
TR summarized his views on suffrage in a letter to his sister Anna (Bamie) Cowles in June 1911: “I have never said very much about it, and always to the same effect, that I tepidly favored its application wherever it was shown to be desired by the majority of women themselves, but that I did not regard it as a reform of much consequence.” He reiterated these views in an editorial in
The Outlook
magazine in February 1912. While supporting women’s rights and equality of rights, he advocated a referendum by women on suffrage, but he also said he didn’t think suffrage would make much of a difference.
As we know, TR did not receive the Republican Party’s nomination in 1912, and he became the Progressive Party’s candidate. He sent his proposal for a suffrage referendum by women to the platform committee. They promptly rejected it and adopted a plank supporting a federal amendment for women’s suffrage. Roosevelt embraced this position a few weeks later in a speech on suffrage in Vermont. He explained there and later in his 1913
Autobiography
how his views on suffrage had changed. He said that it was women reformers, including Jane Addams and Frances Kellor
,
who had convinced him that women needed the vote to secure better conditions for working women and the poor.
Though TR and the Progressive Party lost their bid to regain the presidency in the election of 1912, Roosevelt remained a champion to many in the suffrage movement. Six months later TR accepted an invitation to speak at a suffrage fundraiser in New York City. NAWSA President Anna Howard Shaw introduced Colonel Roosevelt as “the biggest addition to the cause in the past year.” The
New York Times
reported he was “easily the lion of the hour” and spoke for nearly an hour to a capacity crowd at the Metropolitan Opera house. Earlier that day, he had written to his daughter Ethel Derby in Paris about the meeting, “Ugh! How I loathe these speeches!” Nonetheless, he continued to work for suffrage the rest of his life. The growing acceptability of suffrage in 1912-1913 is reflected in the increasing thousands participating in suffrage parades in New York City.
The Roosevelts entertained at Sagamore Hill 300 suffragists and some anti-suffragists they hoped to convert on September 8, 1917, launching the campaign for New York’s second referendum on a state suffrage amendment. (In 1915, only 42 percent supported suffrage.) The 1917 vote was successful, with more than 53 percent of the men voting positively. The victory had broader significance since New York had the largest population and brought more votes to Congress for a suffrage amendment, as well as being the first state in the East to vote for full suffrage.
One of the last letters Roosevelt
w
rote was to a Republican senator from New Hampshire to urge him to vote for the suffrage amendment. In his column he prepared for the February 1919
Metropolitan Magazine,
which was published posthumously, his final sentence was “And there should be no further delay in giving the women the right to vote by federal amendment. It is an absurdity longer to higgle about the matter.”
The federal amendment finally passed both houses of Congress by June 1919 and the required three-fourths of the states ratified it in the next fourteen months. Wilson signed the proclamation of ratification of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920. That date has been celebrated as Women’s Equality Day since 1973. Some states that had rejected the amendment subsequently ratified it (e.g., South Carolina in 1969, Georgia and Louisiana in 1970, and Mississippi in 1985). Many Black women and men in the South were prevented from voting by literacy tests, poll taxes, and intimidation until after the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The women’s suffrage movement was a radical and audacious idea and ridiculed for many decades. TR’s support for suffrage in 1912 and thereafter contributed to its success, though he certainly was not alone nor the most important figure. However, Roosevelt has received little attention in histories of the suffrage movement, including on how his position evolved.
Additional information:
Many books have been published on the women’s suffrage movement and its leaders, e.g.,
Suffrage
by Ellen Carol DuBois (2020),
Why They Marched
by Susan Ware, (2019), and
The Woman’s Hour
by Elaine Weiss. Each of these authors is in the excellent recent television documentary,
The Vote,
which
is streaming on the PBS website. Kathleen Dalton’s,
Theodore Roosevelt
(2002), has more than most biographies on TR and suffrage. Antonia Petrash includes a chapter on TR in her
Long Island and the Woman Suffrage Movement
(1913). Anyone who wants specific references for quotations and sources for the article above can e-mail me (
Natalie.Naylor@Hofstra.edu
).
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Curator's Corner
by Susan Sarna
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When a tiny piece peels, repair it immediately.
Since the Theodore Roosevelt Home and the objects had a total makeover during the rehabilitation project from 2013-2015, it is ever so important to conserve objects at the first sign of distress. Diligent monitoring is the name of the game. Structural elements of the TRH and objects in the collection are monitored for the slightest change on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. I believe if you catch the peeling or cracking at its first sign, you have a better chance of saving the object.
A great example of this is the North Room wallpaper. It is the only original wallpaper that remains in the home and is over 115 years old. During the rehabilitation, paper conservators from the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) worked on the wallpaper both at their conservation studios in Massachusetts and in place here at Sagamore Hill. After the wallpaper was reinstalled, we continued to monitor the wallpaper for any signs of change.
Last year we noticed the wallpaper panels on the wall with the painting of the Grand Canyon beginning to separate from each other. We took photos and measurements for documentation and contacted NEDCC to give them a heads up. We continued to monitor the wallpaper, and this summer we noticed the panels had started to peel away from the wall. We contacted NEDCC again and sent the latest pictures and measurements of the peeling section.
Because we caught the problem early, the conservator believes it will only take one day to reattach the paper and does not feel that it compromised the integrity of the paper. If we had not acted immediately, the paper would have continued to pull away from the wall and possibly tear or fall off the wall all together. The NEDCC conservator is scheduled to be on site in September to reattach the paper. The cost of the conservation is being covered by the Friends of Sagamore Hill and park base funds.
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North Room Wallpaper
-
circa 1905
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Joe Defranco
writes, "Our buddy
Jeremy Hoyt
made it in one piece to
Agate Fossil Beds National Monument
in Harrison, Nebraska. He arrived on June 18 and started his new job on June 22. The scenery there is in big contrast to Long Island, but beautiful nonetheless. He and Summer recently made a day trip to Mount Rushmore which is about 100 miles from their new home."
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Joe Defranco and
Nancy Hall recently visited Sagamore Hill and sent us these pictures. Behind the masks are some familiar faces!
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3-1/2 year old Luke Hall salutes at TRH front door
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Howie Erhlich
,
Brian Tadler, Steve Gilroy, Steve's friend, and Scott Gurney
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Milton Elis
writes that a shelf next to Ted Jr's bed on the third floor in the TRH holds a number of items, only one of which is original to the family.
QUESTION
: What object on top of Ted Jr's bookcase existed at Sagamore Hill before the home was built?
ANSWER:
The wooden sign with "1844" carved into it. This sign hung on a shed when Theodore Roosevelt purchased the hay field upon which Sagamore Hill was constructed.
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The Gateway to Oyster Bay
by Charlotte Miska
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The May
Rough Writer included a picture of the Rough Rider statue in Oyster Bay wearing a face mask. The mask is now gone, but the statue pranksters are back in action. TR is now carrying an American flag, which I think looks quite nice. When the statue was re-dedicated in 2010, an American flag was similarly placed. I do not know who is behind these enhancements, but it is fun to see these tasteful additions.
The statue was commissioned by the Rotary Club of Oyster Bay to celebrate the centennial of the Rotary in 2005. It was made from the original casting of the
Theodore Roosevelt-Rough Rider sculpture created in 1921 by Alexander Phimister Proctor, known for his realistic portrayal of animals. The original sculpture was commissioned by Henry Waldo Coe, a long-time friend of both Roosevelt and Proctor. Coe donated Proctor's sculpture to the city of Portland, Oregon. Two other versions of this sculpture were created for the cities of Mandan and Minot, North Dakota and a miniature version is at the TR Birthplace in New York City.
The Oyster Bay statue was originally installed on the Girls and Boys Club property across from its present location, TR Triangle Park, in October 2005. At the time, the current location was not available as it was the Busy Bee, a convenience store and gas station. Subsequently, the Town of Oyster Bay was able to purchase the property from Sagamore Hill neighbor, Charles Wang. Construction of the triangle started in August 2010 and the statue was moved from The Boys and Girls Club property to Mill-Max Mfg. Corp. in early October to be cleaned and covered with protective wax before being placed in its new home on October 28, 2010. The statue was re-dedicated on October 30, 2010.
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Behind the statue is a memorial for five local veterans who died in World War I including TR’s son Quentin. There are five trees each with a plaque honoring these veterans. The park also contains a flagpole as well as the original 1930 American Legion plaque honoring the local soldiers lost in World War I and a cornerstone from the original American Legion Building. Ted Jr was one of the founders of the American Legion in 1919 and the Oyster Bay American Legion chapter is named after Quentin.
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TR Triangle Park
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Five trees honor local WWI veterans including Quentin
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Interestingly, TR was familiar with Proctor’s work. While in the White House, TR replaced the stone carved lions on the mantle of the State Dining Room with Proctor’s carvings of the American bison. A plaster model of the bison was given to TR. It can be found on the mantle in the Sagamore Hill library. In 1909, TR received a Proctor bronze panther from his “Tennis Cabinet” at a farewell luncheon at the end of his second term. The name and title of each cabinet member is engraved on the base of the sculpture. The panther is also in the library, on top of the bookcase just below the portrait of TR’s father.
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TR with the Proctor Panther and his Tennis Cabinet, March 3, 1909
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Sources:
Oyster Bay Enterprise Pilot, Sagamore Hill National Historic site website, Wikipedia
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August 9, 1905 – TR publishes
Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter.
August 13, 1908 – Quentin and Archie “hold-up” travelers in Oyster Bay and Syosset (a project of the Oyster Bay Riding Club to solicit donations to keep the Nassau Hospital in Mineola from closing). According to the Iola Register (Iola, Kansas), even Emlen Roosevelt could not escape the demands of the two “highwaymen” to “halt” and pony up! (Thanks to
Aurelie Miller-Hendrey, curatorial volunteer, for this bit of Roosevelt family history.)
August 14, 1894
– TR’s brother, Elliot, dies.
August 15, 1898
–
The Rough Riders return to New York and are quarantined in Montauk.
August 25, 1905 –
TR takes a three-hour ride aboard the 64-foot submarine torpedo boat “Plunger,” making him the first US president to ride in a submarine.
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TR takes the "plunge", but the press was not amused!
Submarine Plunger partially submerged with four crew members standing on top, Oyster Bay, 1905
Photo: Library of Congress
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Nature Corner
by Charlotte Miska
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Our flora and fauna provides us with a wide variety of colors. One of the most spectacular is that of the male Eastern Bluebird (
Sialia sialis). Every sighting astonishes me. Nothing compares to their brilliant and unique color. While strolling the grounds of Sagamore Hill recently, I was treated to good looks at a small flock behind the old Visitors Center. The male is a vivid sky blue on the back and head, bright rufous on the breast, and white on the belly. The female is grayish with tinges of blue on the wings and tail and a dull orange breast.
The Eastern Bluebird is part of the thrush family which includes Wood Thrush, Hermit Thrush, Veery, and the American Robin. They like a mix of small trees and shrubs, as well as pastures, golf courses, and open woodlands. Critical to their habitat are perches, such as low branches, fences and posts, to be used for both singing and hunting. They capture their prey by “hawking” (flying out from a perch, grabbing an insect and flying back), as well as hunting on the wing. Prey consists of small flying insects, crickets, grasshoppers, spiders, and snails. In winter their diet includes fruit and berries. They traditionally nest in tree cavities. However, Eastern Bluebird populations plunged in the early 20th century, when non-native House Sparrows and European Starlings were introduced into the United States. Both of these invasive species are also cavity nesters and much more aggressive than Bluebirds, so they quickly took over suitable nest cavities and habitats. Fortunately many people and organizations came to the rescue and put up nesting boxes to supplement natural nesting cavities. Some Bluebirds migrate as far as Central America, but many stay in loose flocks all winter, including on Long Island.
The bluebird was adopted as the New York State bird in 1970.
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Milkweed
Sagamore Hill boasts a spectacular field of milkweed this year. Look for Monarch caterpillars and butterflies.
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Sources: Audubon website, Cornell Lab website,
Bluebird photo by Alix d'Entremont/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
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FOSH Online Book Discussion
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Friends of Sagamore Hill is entering the virtual world by hosting an online book discussion on
September 17, 2020 at 7 pm with authors
Susan Berfield
, author of the recently published,
The Hour of Fate, Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism
, and
Clay Risen
, the author of
The Crowded Hour
, a book published last year about TR, the Rough Riders, and American Foreign Policy. Many of you will remember Clay Risen's engaging conversation with Former Congressman Steve Israel at the Book Revue in Huntington last September.
There will also be a guest appearance by
Joe Wiegand
, renowned Theodore Roosevelt reprisor.
To attend, please submit your
RSVP to Brian Tadler
, a FOSH Board Member and Sagamore Hill volunteer, at
btadler@yahoo.com
.
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The Rough Writer is Available Online
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You can find the
Rough Writer on the Friends of Sagamore Hill website. Simply select the
MORE ABOUT TR menu and click
Rough Writer Newsletter. You will go to a page that lists the
Rough Writer issues starting with January 2020. Back issues are now readily available for your reading pleasure. Thank you
Patrick Teubner for making this happen.
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This newsletter is produced by members of the Volunteer Advisory Board for the volunteers of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.
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Proofreader
Susan Sarna
Laura Cinturati
Layout
Charlotte Miska
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Contributors
Joe DeFranco
Milton Elis
Nancy Hall
Charlotte Miska
Natalie Naylor
Susan Sarna
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Comments?
Nancy Hall, Editor
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The National Park Service cares
for the special places saved by
the American people so that all may
experience our heritage.
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About Sagamore Hill National Historic Site
Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, located in Oyster Bay, New York, is a unit of the National Park Service. The Site was established by Congress in 1962 to preserve and interpret the structures, landscape, collections and other cultural resources associated with Theodore Roosevelt’s home in Oyster Bay, New York, and to ensure that future generations understand the life and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, his family and the significant events associated with him.
(516) 922-4788.
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