#OnThisDay in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt became the first (former) president to fly in an airplane! While participating in the Missouri State Republican Party's campaign, he was invited to fly by aviator Arch Hoxsey, a teacher at the Wright Brothers' flight school in Montgomery, Alabama. At first Roosevelt refused, but the lure of adventure proved great enough that he changed his mind. He was in the air for about four minutes, and called it "the finest experience I ever have had," wishing he could have flown for an hour. See film footage of the event in our digital library: theodorerooseveltcenter.org/…

#OTD 137 years ago, Theodore and Edith Roosevelt’s second son, Kermit Roosevelt, was born in 1889 at Sagamore Hill, the family home. Roosevelt considered his second son not only a great sportsman but also “a boy with his refined tastes and his genuine appreciation of literature—and of so much else,” as he wrote in a November 13, 1909 letter to his daughter Ethel. In honor of his birthday, here are three things we found in Roosevelt’s correspondence that give a behind-the-scenes look at Kermit and his father's opinion of him. -Roosevelt considered him a bad shot, but a good hunter, explorer, and writer. As he wrote in a 1911 letter to Ted, “Kermit is not a good shot, but he is a very good hunter and explorer in wild and somewhat dangerous country; I believe he will have the gift of writing.” Roosevelt’s hunch was right, as Kermit would go on to write six books. -Roosevelt liked the cold, but Kermit didn’t. As he wrote in a 1916 letter to Kermit, “I am afraid [Mother and I] have grown rather to sympathize with your views of the cold; altho I wish you, and darling Belle especially, were at this moment where the climate is colder.” At the time, Kermit and his wife Belle were in Buenos Aires, Argentina. - Roosevelt loved hearing Kermit play the mandolin during the Smithsonian-Roosevelt Scientific Expedition. As he stated in a June 1909 letter to Ethel, “I much like to hear him play his mandolin, by the way. Altogether this is a ‘great adventure.’” Read more about Kermit in our digital encyclopedia article here (theodorerooseveltcenter.org/…) and let us know in the comments below what your favorite story about Kermit is or what you especially admire about him! #KermitRoosevelt #RooseveltFamily #Explorers

#OnThisDay in 1905, President Roosevelt hosted a summit at the White House regarding the future of football. Collegiate football was less than a decade old in the United States when Theodore Roosevelt saw his very first game as a Harvard College undergraduate in 1876. This young sport soon came to be known for several troubling aspects, including excessive violence during play, fatalities on the field, the use of non-student athletes, recruiting scandals, and corrupt referees. The head of Roosevelt’s alma mater, Harvard College President Charles Eliot, joined the swelling ranks of those criticizing football in his 1903 annual report. Eliot’s disgust was so great that he called for the sport to be outlawed altogether. Roosevelt never thought football should be abolished, but he did support rule changes to make the game safer. In September, just before the fall 1905 season began, President Roosevelt received a letter from Endicott Peabody of Groton, the school all four Roosevelt boys attended. Peabody insisted that “the teaching of Foot-ball at the Universities is dishonest” and asked Roosevelt to use his bully pulpit to convince coaches to stop teaching underhanded plays. Roosevelt determined to clean up football. On October 9, 1905, he brought together seven men for a White House meeting: football coaches Walter Camp of Yale, Arthur T. Hildebrand of Princeton, and William T. Reid of Harvard, along with the three heads of their respective alumni committees, and Secretary of State Elihu Root. Roosevelt encouraged them to lay out methods to decrease gratuitous violence. He lacked authority to force the coaches to do anything, but he had faith in the ability of wise and good-hearted Americans to come to a mutually beneficial agreement. The men issued a statement denouncing on-field viciousness and pledged themselves to a higher level of play. It was the first time that a president had actively involved himself in reforming college athletics. By the end of the year, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association had been founded. This precursor to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) would eventually adopt safer rules of play. Theodore Roosevelt is often credited with the reform of football. When he put his personal convictions and the moral force of the presidency behind it, coaches and universities paid attention.

The TR Center is CLOSED to the public today and tomorrow, 10/8 and 10/9 for staff preparation and participation in #TeddyCon, the first ever Theodore Roosevelt Convention! For our friends attending the events, we look forward to seeing you! And for those who would like to visit the gallery, we hope to see you another day! theodoreroosevelt.org/teddyc…

#OnThisDay in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt delivered an address at the Berry Schools (which became Berry College in 1926) in Mount Berry, Rome, Georgia. Martha Berry founded her Boys' Industrial School in 1902, in which the students worked for free in exchange for their education. Roosevelt said in a 1909 letter to Martha Berry that there was "no school in which [he had] taken more interest," and encouraged her to open a girls' school as well. In fact, the girls' school would open later that year. Speaking at the Berry Schools, Roosevelt spoke on the topic of good citizenship, and how boys and girls must learn to help both themselves and others, and to back their words with deeds. He told them he'd got what he had only through his virtues, and through working at it. "Honesty, courage, decency, tenderness and force, combined, they are all commonplace virtues, but they are essential virtues. They are the main things that I want to see developed in the American man and the American woman, and, therefore, in the American boy and the American girl. I never got anything in my life by an unusual display of genius, or even by an unusual display of talent. Whatever I got has always come through doing a number of things just as hard as I know how; each of them perfectly ordinary things, but ordinary things that ordinary people do not do, or, at least, did not do to the extend that was necessary in order to make a great success through the doing of them." Berry and the Roosevelts became good friends - she maintained correspondence with both Theodore and Edith, and she visited their home in Oyster bay, New York. Theodore Roosevelt addressed the Berry Schools again when their association met in New York City in 1911. After Roosevelt's first visit, the guest cabin on campus was renamed Roosevelt Cabin. It still stands today and was restored in 2015. This undated image of the cabin comes from the college's collections. Read Roosevelt's 1910 speech as published in a later pamphlet: ow.ly/uL9250ZTHkB

Roosevelt regularly mentioned the commonality between Americans from the East to the West in speeches, and we’re always excited when we find a particularly quotable line that emphasizes community and what Roosevelt would sometimes call “fellow-feeling.” Today’s #WednesdayWisdom, which comes from an August 27, 1902 speech that Roosevelt delivered at the fairgrounds in Bangor, Maine, focuses on this exact topic: “Any effort is to be welcomed that brings people closer together, so as to secure a better understanding among those whose walks of life are in ordinary circumstances far apart.” What’s especially unique about this speech is that the digital library has not only the full text of the speech Roosevelt’s reading copy but also his handwritten edits on the second half of the speech, which gives us an idea of how he wordsmithed his language. For example, how today’s WednesdayWisdom was originally written before Roosevelt’s edited it was as follows: “Any kind of serious work should be welcomed that brings people closer together so as to secure a better understanding between one another among those whose ordinary walks of life are in ordinary circumstances far apart.” There’s even a letter in the digital library from Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, an average American, who talked about Roosevelt’s visit to Maine and his speeches, particularly his speech in Bangor. As she noted, “A chiliad [a group of a thousand things] of sermons from the pulpit would not hit so many to convince them as that very straight forward talk at the fair-grounds on morals and good citizenship.” Read Roosevelt’s “very straight forward talk” in the digital library, either the reading copy (ow.ly/hx9p50ZR6E8) or edited version (ow.ly/l7hj50ZR6E9). #HistoricalSpeeches #MaineHistory #RooseveltQuotes

#OTD 142 years ago, William “Bill” Sewall and Wilmot Dow first began to hew wood for the ranch house at the Elkhorn Ranch. Sewall and Dow—later joined by their families—would end up spending just over two years in the North Dakota Badlands helping Theodore Roosevelt run his ranch. Here’s a brief timeline from their ranching days at the Elkhorn: -On August 1, 1884, Sewall and Dow arrived at the Chimney Butte Ranch in the Dakota Badlands. Roosevelt was delighted they had come, writing to his sister about his “two backwoods babies.” -From the beginning, Sewall wasn’t keen on the Badlands. He told his brother Samuel in an August 17, 1884 letter that he intended to leave the Badlands once he had made some money as he wanted to be back where there was “clear water and trees in sight.” Even so, Sewall still signed this letter “Your Cow puncher.” -In just over a month from October to November 1884, Sewall and Dow had hewn all the logs for the ranch house. By mid-December, all the timber was hauled, but the walls weren’t up yet because they had been after horses. Two months later in mid-February 1885, the house was shingled with the underfloor laid, but as Sewall told his brother, “[T]he weather is so cold we cant [sic] do much on the house.” -The house was finally finished in the spring of 1885, and Roosevelt and Dow both headed out in June—Dow back to Maine to marry Lizzie Edwards. Dow then returned to the Badlands with Lizzie, Sewall’s wife Mary, and their daughter Kittie, called “Will and trio” by Sewall, who all arrived on August 8, 1885. - Sewall, Dow, their families, and Roosevelt began a peaceful life at the Elkhorn. As Sewall stated in his book, “People roundabout used to say, ‘no house is big enough to hold two women,’ but there was never any harsh word spoken at Elkhorn Ranch, and I have an idea that those were the most peaceful years of Roosevelt's life. He spent most of the time with us, going East very little.” -In the summer of 1886, they grew a garden with squash, potatoes, corn, peas, string beans, and cucumbers—and they had fresh milk, a luxury! As Mary Sewall wrote in a letter to her sister, “The men in this country all think a good deal of milk. It is something every ranch does not have so we gave [the twenty-six cowboys participating in the roundup] all the milk they wanted cream and all and bread and butter, cake and cookies and coffee if they wanted.” -The Sewalls and Dows even welcomed two sons a week apart from each other in August 1886. Fred Sewall was born on August 5, 1886, and Wilmot Edwards Dow was born a week later on August 12, 1886. They were affectionately called the “Badlands babies.” Roosevelt wrote his sister, “Seawall [sic] and Dow have both got wee sons; so the population of my ranch is increasing in a rather alarming manner.” - When the cattle didn’t sell well in Chicago in the fall of 1886, Dow and Sewall decided it was best if they left so that Roosevelt didn’t lose more money. They talked with Roosevelt and all agreed for Sewall and Dow to take their families back to Maine. On October 14, 1886, the Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Maine reported, “[Sewall and Dow] have closed up their business there and are coming back to Island Falls with their [f]amilies[.] They have never liked Dakota.” -In a November 1890 letter, Roosevelt asked Sewall, “Do Mrs. Sewall and Mrs. Dow ever think of the old ranch house?” Sewall’s reply isn’t in the digital library, but he answered the question years later in his book, Bill Sewall’s Story of T.R.: “I guess we have all thought all our lives since that it was the happiest time that any of us have known.” Read more about Bill Sewall and his time in the North Dakota Badlands in our digital encyclopedia article here (theodorerooseveltcenter.org/…).

#OnThisDay in 1898, Theodore Roosevelt opened his campaign for the governorship of New York with a speech in New York City titled "Duties of a Great Nation." In it, he stated one of his more famous rules to live by - that it was better to wear out than to rust out. Roosevelt promised he would govern with integrity if elected, and addressed issues that were almost always foremost in his mind: national defense and the navy, the role of federal government in solving national problems, and how hard work and honesty would make for good government. As he so often did, he also offered rousing calls to action. "Greatness means strife for nation and man alike," he said. "A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage. ... We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us is the life if action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out." Read the speech as published in the 1926 edition of his collected works: ow.ly/qPtX50ZTFEc

Each summer, the Theodore Roosevelt Center hosts a remote paid internship program, selecting a cohort of eight interns from more than two hundred applicants to assist us in building our digital library. Collectively, they catalog and review the metadata for thousands of Roosevelt's papers to make them more accessible to researchers. Our summer interns are graduate students or recent graduates from a variety of programs, including archival studies and records management, library and information science, history and museum studies, and more. They come from around the country, and sometimes around the world! Several of our interns have even stayed on as temporary contractors or to volunteer, and sometimes even join our permanent staff - three of our current staff members were once TR Center summer interns! As part of the program, interns have long had the option to complete a digital humanities project as part of their work, anything from encyclopedia articles to storymaps to data normalization work. This year, we emphasized that project more strongly and held our first intern symposium! If you're interested in hearing from our interns about their experiences and the research they completed, you can watch the symposium on our Youtube channel: youtube.com/watch?v=UhARzNWZ…

#OnThisDay in 1904, President Roosevelt established Breton Islands Federal Bird Reserve off the coast of Louisiana. It was the second reserve established after Pelican Island in Florida, created to protect both birds and their eggs. These barrier islands serve as a breeding ground for twenty-three species of seabirds and shorebirds, including pelicans, gulls, and terns. Nutria, rabbits, and racoons also call the islands home. Over the years, the islands hosted a number of facilities, including a lighthouse, a fishing village, and oil production, but they have all been destroyed by hurricanes. Today, it is a wilderness area that remains federally protected as the Breton National Wildlife Refuge. The Fish and Wildlife Service has worked to restore the islands, especially following the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Breton Island is the only bird reserve established by Roosevelt that he personally visited. In June 1915, Roosevelt took a four-day trip there with the Louisiana State Conservation Commission and the Audubon Society. You can see film footage of that visit in our digital library: theodorerooseveltcenter.org/… Roosevelt published an article about his visit in Scribner's Magazine in 1916, which you can read here: babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?…

Two days ago, we asked our audience to guess what Theodore Roosevelt said on multiple occasions was his favorite chapter that he ever wrote. And today we’re revealing the answer! It is Chapter IX: Outdoors and Indoors from Roosevelt’s autobiography. As Roosevelt succinctly told his Harvard friend, Charles G. Washburn, “This chapter is the best I ever wrote.” Roosevelt’s younger daughter Ethel also praised Chapter IX of his autobiography writing to her own daughter, Edith Derby Williams, on May 5, 1957, years after Roosevelt’s death: “I have been reading [Father] bits of the Biography, Gfather’s. Do please do the same with Mike or the children. The ‘Outdoors and Indoors’ Chapter. Also some of the Western books, Ranch Life and the H.T. etc. They reall [sic] are good. They are Grandfather as he talked . . .” If you too want to read Roosevelt as he talked, check out his favorite chapter here: ow.ly/sxgS50ZTCs3 #OutdoorsAndIndoors #RooseveltAutobiography

Get Ready for TeddyCon! October 9-11, the Theodore Roosevelt Center and the Theodore Roosevelt Association convene at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota, for the first ever TeddyCon! Themed "Looking Back, Moving Forward," it will be a celebration of all things Theodore Roosevelt! But if you just can't wait to start celebrating, we have shirts available for purchase through Blue Hawk Outfitters, the campus store of Dickinson State University! Get your shirts here: bluehawkoutfitters.com/colle… For more information about TeddyCon and to register for tickets: theodoreroosevelt.org/teddyc…

In honor of October being #NationalBookMonth, we wanted to share some of the books Theodore Roosevelt found the time to read during the 1904 presidential election. Based on our calculations, he read at least eight thousand pages based on the books he mentioned in a November 1904 letter to his friend, Sir George Otto von Trevelyan. And a lot of them were re-reads! On Roosevelt’s list were Trevelyan’s The American Revolution (three volumes in 1904), The Life and Letters of Macaulay, and The Early History of Charles James Fox; Thomas Babington Macaulay’s History of England; James Ford Rhodes’s History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (four volumes with a fifth volume published in November 1904); and “a good deal of Dickens.” In the letter to Trevelyan, Roosevelt discussed Macaulay’s history and Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit in the greatest detail, noting he had discovered a greater appreciation for Macaulay during this re-read. Roosevelt also added about Macaulay’s history: “It is a pretty good test of an author to have a President, who is also a candidate for the Presidency, read it in the midst of a campaign with the keenest appreciation of its wisdom, of its knowledge of the motives and acts of men who were engaged in the difficult task of self-government, and with at the same time a great sense of relaxation and pure enjoyment.” We’d also be delighted if you let us know in the comments below what books you particularly enjoy. What’s your Martin Chuzzlewit or Macaulay’s History of England? #BookLovers #ClassicLiterature #ReadingList #TheodoreRoosevelt

It’s #NationalBookMonth, so let’s talk about Theodore Roosevelt, one of the White House’s biggest bookworms and someone we like to call the readingest and writingest president. Roosevelt wrote over 40 books himself throughout his life, covering everything from naval history to his wild outdoor adventures. And he had a personal favorite chapter of his own writing, what he described in a 1917 letter as “the chapter in which I express my deepest feelings; and yet I had to express them with so much reserve that only a few people could be expected to understand them!” Can anyone guess the specific chapter—or even just the book—that Roosevelt said on multiple occasions was his favorite chapter he ever wrote? Drop your best guesses in the comments! We’ll reveal the answer later this week. #TheodoreRoosevelt #ReadingPresident #PresidentialBooks #BookwormsUnite #RooseveltWritings

In a short October 13, 1904 letter to John St. Loe Strachey written just before election day in November 1904, Theodore Roosevelt briefly reflected on several aspects of politics, including political parties and what he believed his chances were in the presidential election. We liked what Roosevelt had to say about political parties, so we selected it for today’s #WednesdayWisdom. “The best work can only be done by adherence to the best party; but if adherence becomes changed into servility, the result is that that man had better not belong to any party at all, or indeed, take part in any politics.” This letter in particular is also unique because it’s a rare opportunity to get Roosevelt’s own words about what he expected the outcome of the 1904 presidential election to be. As Roosevelt wrote Strachey, “A candidate can never tell much about his own prospects.” Roosevelt thought the chances “slightly favored” him but also observed, “I may be utterly mistaken.” Of course, he wasn’t mistaken, winning 56.4 percent of the popular vote and becoming the first accidental president (someone who became president upon the death of his predecessor) to win a term in his own right. (He also was the first non-midwestern Republican to be elected president.) And we know that Roosevelt followed his own advice, changing parties in 1912 to avoid blind adherence to a Republican Party that he believed was too conservative and not progressive enough. In this way, Roosevelt demonstrated that trying to bring about the best work was more important than mere political affiliation. Read the entire letter here: theodorerooseveltcenter.org/… #Election1904 #HistoryQuotes #PoliticalParties

In honor of #NationalCoffeeDay tomorrow, we wanted to share a few facts (and myths!) about Theodore Roosevelt and coffee. -He didn’t coin Maxwell House’s saying, “Good to the last drop!” and we haven’t been able to source him drinking a gallon of coffee day, as he’s often cited as doing. -But his coffee cup was larger than normal. His son Ted said, “It was so large it was more in the nature of a bathtub.” And his daughter Ethel noted, “No one else had such a large cup.” -Roosevelt’s favorite type of coffee came from Puerto Rico. In fact, according to Roosevelt in a 1903 letter, “Our whole family have taken to it so now we use no other.” -But according to Edith in a 1906 letter to Ethel, the family might not have liked it as much as Roosevelt thought: “I have likewise ordered the coffee which is also the kind we all use unless Father is at home, when I have Porto Rico coffee.” -Roosevelt preferred his coffee with sugar or saccharine. He strained hot milk over the coffee and then dropped in something sweet. As Ethel remembered, “When all was ready dropping the saccharine which fizzed so pleasantly.” -After Roosevelt’s death, his sons and his daughter Ethel opened up a Brazilian coffeehouse in New York City that they ran from 1919 to 1928. To avoid legal issues with the first name (Brazilian Coffee House), they renamed it the Double-R in 1921 for Roosevelt and Robinson (the last name of their cousin who was also an owner.) -The Roosevelt children sold the Double-R to a couple who had met at the Double-R five years prior! What’s your favorite fact about Theodore Roosevelt and coffee? Let us know in the comments below. #CoffeeHistory #TheodoreRoosevelt #CoffeeFacts #CoffeeLovers

#OnThisDay in 1918, Theodore Roosevelt spoke at the opening of the Fourth Liberty Loan Campaign in Baltimore, Maryland. Liberty loans, or liberty bonds, were sold by the United States government to support the Allied war effort. Support of the country through the purchase of bonds became an important symbol of patriotic duty. Over the course of the war, twenty million people purchased the bonds, raising seventeen billion dollars. The fourth bond unfortunately defaulted when called in, in 1934, because the Treasury refused to pay the bondholders back in gold as had been promised. Investors received dollars, the value of which had deflated severely, and thus received back only about 40 percent of what they were due. The case went to the Supreme Court, who agreed that the refusal to pay in gold was a breach of contract, but also that actual damages could not be proved since private ownership of gold as an investment had been banned by executive order of President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt is pictured here when he spoke on September 28, 1918. You can view brief film footage of Roosevelt speaking at this event - as well as several other Liberty Loan campaigns, and a variety of other events - in our digital library: theodorerooseveltcenter.org/…

In honor of #NationalNicknameDay, we’re sharing the nicknames and pet names of the nine Roosevelts (TR, his two wives, and six children). Read more in our Substack post: ow.ly/8pEw50ZO0Vj -TR: Tedie, Teedie, T.D., Thee Jr., Thee (after his father’s death), and yes, occasionally Teddy (seven times out of 300 letters from 1867 to 1885) -Alice (wife): Darling Little Sunshine, Darling Queenie, My Dearest Love, Darling, best beloved, little Wife, Darling baby, Darling Little Wife, Blessed little heart’s-darling, Blessed Wifie, My purest and sweetest little wife, My Blessed Little Wifie, and TR’s personal favorite, Darling Wifie -Edith: My own darling true-love, Darling Edie, Darling, and our personal favorite, Oh, sweetest of all sweet girls -Alice (daughter): Alicey, Sissy, Sissy Wissy, and Mousiekins -Ted: Ted-ped, Blessed Ted, and occasionally Blessed Old Ted -Kermit: Kermit-boy -Ethel: Ethely-bye (and sometimes Blessed, blessed Ethely-bye), Darling little Ethel, and Blessed Ethley Bykins -Archie: Archie-kins -Quentin: Quenty-Quee, Quenty, and sometimes Q #RooseveltFamily #PresidentialHistory #FamilyNicknames #TheodoreRoosevelt

#OnThisDay in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt addressed the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Association at their convention in Little Rock, Arkansas. In his speech, he argued that some problems could only be solved at a national level. Founded in 1906 as a coalition of businessmen, corporate trusts, municipal governments, and other stakeholders in the shipping industry, the Deep Waterway Association advocated for the construction of a navigable commercial water route connecting the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The idea was highly influential - Roosevelt had previously addressed the convention in 1907, and President Taft addressed them in 1909. The 1912 Progressive Party platform actually promises that the equipment used to construct the Panama Canal will later be used to construct the waterway, and Roosevelt did so in his 1912 speech. The project was never fully realized, and although some portions of the route have been completed in the decade since, the original grand vision has long since fizzled out. Speaking at the 1912 convention, Roosevelt warned against the risks of the decentralization of such a project, arguing that only the federal government could manage it without it falling apart. "I believe such a project as this should be handled by a commission instead of leaving it to a scramble of interests," he said, arguing it should be handled just as the Panama Canal had been. "More and more we are growing to think nationally," he said. "More and more we are growing to realize that many of our problems are by their nature such that they can be dealt with only as a whole and only be the exercise of the national power."

#OnThisDay in 1906, President Roosevelt established the first National Monument, Devils Tower in Wyoming. The Antiquities Act, passed on June 8, 1906, authorized the president "to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shale bee confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected." The act was deemed necessary after two decades of looting, desecration, and destruction of Native American sites in the Southwest such as Chaco Canyon and Cliff Palace. It was the result of years of work led by Representative John F. Lacey (R-IA). Lacey had previously sponsored a 1900 act which prohibits the trade of illegally-obtained wildlife and authorizes the restoration of wild game and birds where they have been extirpated. Devils Tower was chosen as the first National Monument because it was a relatively uncontroversial choice - it was undoubtedly a scientifically remarkable site, it had no real commercial value for resource extraction, and the amount of land required to protect it was small. President Roosevelt would go on to establish seventeen more monuments during his administration. Today, there are 138, mostly managed by the National Park Service.