Col. Theodore Roosevelt Dies in His Sleep, Dec. 6, 1919

When Roosevelt died in 1919 his son sent out telegram to family members that read simply, "The old lion is dead."

Theodore Roosevelt in Chicago for the 1912 Progressive Party National Convention. (Photo from the Chicago Daily News/Chicago  History Museum/Getty Images)

CreditCredit

From The Hickory Daily Record, Jan. 6, 1919

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Is Dead

End Comes Peacefully at His Oyster Bay Home. . . Mrs. Roosevelt Found Husband Dead Early This Morning. . . He Passed Quietly During the Night. . . Nobody Dreamed His Condition So Serious.

By the Associated Press

Oyster Bay, N.Y., Jan. 6—Col. Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep early today at his home on Sagamore Hill in this village. Death is believed to have been due to rheumatism, which affected his heart. The colonel suffered a severe attack of rheumatism and sciatica on the new year’s day, but none of his friends had any idea he was so ill.

About 4 a.m. Mrs. Roosevelt, who was the only other member of the family at Oyster Bay, went to her husband’s room and found that he had died during the night.

Mrs. Roosevelt telephoned to Col. Emlin Roosevelt, cousin of the former president, and he came to the Roosevelt home immediately. Telegrams were dispatched to the colonel’s children, who were in the other parts of the country. Two of the colonel’s sons, Major Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Capt. Kermit Roosevelt, are in France. Mrs. Ethel Derby and her two children are in Aiken, S.C.

Details for the funeral have not been arranged, but the colonel will be buried at Oyster Bay.

Telegrams of condolence and sympathy began to pour in from all parts of the country as soon as the news of his death was known.

The former president came to his home on Sagamore Hill from the Roosevelt hospital on Christmas day, but a week later was stricken with a severe attack of rheumatism and sciatica. The rheumatism affected his right hand, and he had remained in his room since that time.

Last Saturday the colonel’s secretary, Miss Josephine Stricker, called to see him, but the colonel was asleep in his room. Miss Stricker said today that no one had any idea that death was so near.

Flags were placed at half mast at Oyster Bay today.

His Remarkable Career

Colonel Roosevelt’s career has left such a vivid impression upon the people of his time that it is necessary to touch but briefly upon some of the more striking phases of his varied, interesting and “strenuous” life to recall to the public mind full details of his many exploits and experiences.

Called to the white house in 1901 after President McKinley had been assassinated, Col. Roosevelt, 42 years of age, became the youngest president of the United States has ever had. Three years later he was elected as president by the largest popular vote a president has received.

Thus Roosevelt, sometimes called a man of destiny, served for seven years as the nation’s chief magistrate. In a subsequent decade the fortunes of politics did not favor him, for, again a candidate for president—this time leading the Progressive party which he himself had organized when he differed radically with some of the policies of the Republican party in 1912—he went down to defeat, together with the Republican candidate, William Howard Taft. Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, was elected.

Col. Roosevelt’s enemies agreed with his friends that his life, his character and his writings represented a high type of Americanism.

Of Dutch ancestry, born in New York City on October 27, 1858, in a house on East Twentieth Street, the baby Theodore was a weakling. He was one of four children who came to Theodore and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt. The mother was of southern stock and the father of northern, a situation which during the early years of Theodore’s boyhood was not allowed to interfere with the family life during the Civil War days.

So frail that he was not privileged to associate with the other boys in his neighborhood, Roosevelt was tutored privately in New York and during travels on which his parents took the children abroad. A porch gymnasium at his home provided him with physical exercise with which he combated a troublesome asthma. His father, a glass importer and a man of means, was his constant companion. He kept a diary. He read so much history and fictional books of adventure that he was known as a bookworm. He took boxing lessons. He was an amateur naturalist, and at the age of 17 he entered Harvard University. There, he was not as prominent as some others in an athletic way, as it is not recorded that he “made” the baseball and football teams, but his puny body had undergone a metamorphosis and before graduation he became one of the champion boxers of the college. This remarkable physical development was emphasized by something which took place shortly after he left Harvard in 1880. He went to Europe, climbed the Matterhorn, and as a result was elected a member of the Alpine Club of London—an organization of men who had performed notable feats of adventure.

A few months after his graduation, Roosevelt married Miss Alice Lee of Boston. She died in 1884, leaving one child, Alice, now the wife of Representative Nicholas Longworth of Ohio. In 1886 Roosevelt married Miss Edith Kermit Carow of New York, and to them five children were born—Edith, now the wife of Dr. Richard Dorby, and four sons, Theodore Jr., Kermit, Archibald and Quentin.

The public career of the man who was to become president began not long after he left college. His profession was law but the activities that were to come left him no time in which to practice it. In 1882, 1883 and 1884 he was elected to the New York State assembly where his efforts on behalf of good government and civil service reform attracted attention. When the Republican National Convention of 1884 was held in Chicago, he was chairman of the New York State delegation.

After this experience he dropped out of politics for two years. Going west, he purchased ranches along the Little Missouri river in North Dakota and divided his time between outdoor sports, particularly hunting, and literary work. Here he laid the foundation of his series of books, “The Winning of the West,” which was published from 1889 to 1889 (obviously wrong) and of other volumes and kindred character.

Returning to New York he became the Republican candidate for mayor in 1886. He was defeated. President Harrison in 1889 appointed him a member of the United States civil service commission and President Cleveland continued him in this office, which he resigned in 1895 to become New York City’s police commissioner.

“A thing that attracted me to this office,” Roosevelt said at the time he accepted this appointment, “was that it was done in the hurly-burly, for I don’t like cloister life.” Honesty was the watchword of this administration, and the two years of his occupancy became memorable through the reforms he inaugurated, attracting the nation’s attention while holding a position which was obscure in comparison with the events to come. Illicit liquor traffic, gambling, vice in general of these evils he purged the city in the face of corrupt political opposition, and the reputation he established as a reformer won him the personal selection by President McKinley as Assistant Secretary of the navy in 1897. A year later the Spanish American war broke out.

The Roosevelt temperament did not allow the man to retain a deputy cabinet position with war offering something more exciting. Leonard Wood, now Major-General U.S.A., was then President McKinley’s physician and one of Roosevelt’s staunchest friends.

The famous Rough Riders were organized by Wood and Roosevelt—a band of fighting men the mention of whose name today suggests immediately the word “Roosevelt.” They came out of the west—plainsmen, miners, rough and ready fighters who were natural marksmen, and Wood became their colonel and “Teddy” as he has become familiarly called by the public, their Lieutenant-Colonel. In company with the regulars of the army, they took transport to Cuba, landed at Santiago and were soon engaged in the thick of battle. Among the promotions which this hardy regiment’s gallantry brought about were those of Wood to Brigadier-General and Roosevelt to Colonel—and this title Theodore Roosevelt cherished until the end. Some of the Rough Riders formed the military escort when he was elected president a few years later.

When Cuba had been liberated Roosevelt returned to New York. A gubernatorial campaign was in swing, with The Republican party in need of a capable candidate. Roosevelt was nominated. Van Wyck, his Democratic opponent, was defeated. The reforms Roosevelt had favored as assemblyman he now had the opportunity to consummate, together with others of more importance, and it was during this administration that he is said first to have earned the hostility of corporations. When the Republican national convention was held in Philadelphia in 1900 his party in New York state demanded and attained his nomination for vice president on the ticket with William McKinley. In November of that year this ticket was elected.

The policies of McKinley, Roosevelt endeavored to carry out after he succeeded the former upon the president’s tragic death at the hands of an assassin. Roosevelt retained his predecessor’s cabinet as his own and he kept in office the ambassadors and ministers whom McKinley had appointed. As much as two years before the presidential campaign of 1904 Republican organizations in various states began endorsing him as their next candidate.