Theodore Roosevelt in New York Politics
At Twenty-Three, He Took On Albany. At Twenty-Five, He Lost Everything in a Single Day.
Love at First Sight
At a Chestnut Hill dinner party in October 1878, a Harvard student met seventeen-year-old Alice Lee. Two years later he married her on his twenty-second birthday.
A Cyclone at Age 23
In January 1882 the youngest member of the New York State Assembly took his seat in Albany — and promptly went to war with the corruption he found there.
February 14, 1884
Two days after his daughter's birth, Roosevelt lost his mother and his wife in the same house on the same day. “The light has gone out of my life,” he wrote.
Key Facts
| Met Alice Lee | October 1878, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| Engaged | January 25, 1880 |
| Married | October 27, 1880 — his 22nd birthday — Brookline, Massachusetts |
| Entered the Assembly | January 1882, its youngest member at age 23 |
| First book | The Naval War of 1812, published 1882 |
| Daughter born | Alice Lee Roosevelt, February 12, 1884 |
| The double tragedy | February 14, 1884 — his mother and his wife died in the same house |
| His mother | Martha "Mittie" Bulloch Roosevelt, of typhoid fever |
| His wife | Alice Lee Roosevelt, of Bright's disease |
| His diary that night | "The light has gone out of my life." |
| 1884 convention | Backed reformer George F. Edmunds; James G. Blaine won the nomination |
| Afterward | West to Dakota Territory and the Badlands |
A Historian at Twenty-Three
Begun in his Harvard years and published in 1882, Roosevelt's first book was carried aboard U.S. Navy ships as a reference work.
When Ideals Meet Politics
In Chicago, the young reformer fought for George F. Edmunds and lost to James G. Blaine — then boarded a train west to Dakota Territory.