Eleanor Butler Roosevelt

Eleanor Butler Alexander Roosevelt was born on December 26, 1888, in New York City. She was the daughter of Henry Addison Alexander, a lawyer in New York, and Grace Green. She was a great-granddaughter of Theron Rudd Butler and her great aunt was Eleanor Butler Sanders.

Eleanor Roosevelt married Theodore "Ted" Roosevelt III on June 29, 1910, at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. Theodore Roosevelt III was the eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Edith Kermit Carow. The couple had four children: Grace Green Roosevelt McMillan (1911–1994), Theodore Roosevelt IV (1914–2001), Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt III (1915–1991), and Quentin Roosevelt II (1919–1948).

Throughout her life, Eleanor Roosevelt engaged in various philanthropic activities and supported her husband's career. During World War I, from July 1917 to December 1918, she participated in YMCA canteen work in France. Her fellow worker Marian Baldwin described her as working "like a horse." She worked to improve conditions for Puerto Rican women while her husband served as governor of Puerto Rico from 1929 to 1931. In 1937, she organized the first American women's committee for China Relief, and in 1942, she directed the American Red Cross Club in England.

Eleanor Roosevelt received multiple citations and commendations for her service, including from the French government, General John J. Pershing, and the U.S. War Department. She authored a memoir titled "Day Before Yesterday," which details aspects of her life.

In addition to her humanitarian work, Roosevelt was an avid photographer. In 1986, her daughter Grace donated 25 albums and approximately 5,000 photographs to the Library of Congress. These collections include images of U.S. presidents and international dignitaries. She and her daughter later studied photography with J. Ghislain Lootens. Roosevelt utilized a Voigtländer Superb camera from 1935, developing her own films and making prints. Her photographs of Europe, Mexico, and Asia are noted for their quality.

Eleanor Roosevelt died on May 29, 1960, at Oyster Bay, Nassau County, Long Island, New York, sixteen years after her husband’s death. Theodore Roosevelt III died of a heart attack shortly after the Invasion of Normandy in 1944.