Robert Roosevelt

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Robert Roosevelt

Robert Barnwell Roosevelt (Originally Robert Barnhill Roosevelt) (August 7, 1829 – June 14, 1906) was the brother of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., the uncle of President Theodore Roosevelt and the great-uncle of Eleanor Roosevelt. His father was Cornelius Roosevelt (1794-1871) and his mother was Margaret Barnhill (1799-1861).

He was an early conservationist and worked for the protection of waterways. Roosevelt served in Congress as a Democrat 1871-73. He was appointed U.S. Minister to the Netherlands by President Grover Cleveland, and served 1888-89. He authored several editions of: Superior Fishing; or The Striped Bass, Trout, Black Bass and Bluefish of the Northern States.

Roosevelt is credited with influencing his nephew, Theodore Roosevelt, to become a conservationist. He also was a popular author and a friend of such writers such as Oscar Wilde. Theodore Roosevelt, in his biography, credits Robert with being the first to scribe the "Br'er Rabbit" stories (which had been passed down orally by slaves), "publishing them in Harper's, where they fell flat. This was a good many years before a genius arose who, in 'Uncle Remus', made the stories immortal." (Roosevelt was referring to Joel Chandler Harris, who first published the Uncle Remus stories in The Atlanta Journal in 1879).

Roosevelt was the father of many children - both by his wife (Elizabeth Ellis Roosevelt) and by a mistress (Minnie O'Shea Fortescue) whom he subsequently married after the death of his wife. Between Elizabeth Ellis Roosevelt, they had Margaret Barnhill Roosevelt, John Ellis Roosevelt, and Robert Jr. Roosevelt.^[1] Among the illegitimate offspring who thus became his stepchildren were Kenyon Fortescue (destined for a career as an attorney), and Major Granville Roland "Rolly" Fortescue, who eventually married Grace Hubbard Fortescue (née Grace Hubbard Bell), a defendant in the notorious 1932 murder trial known as the Massie Affair.

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Grace Fortescue

THE VANCE-ROOSEVELT WEDDING.; MR. JOHN E. ROOSEVELT UNITED TO MISS NANNIE MITCHELL VANCE--SOME OF THE PRESENTS. from The New York Times of Wednesday, February 20, 1879, page 8, retrieved without charge on June 1, 2008 "The marriage of Mr. John E. Roosevelt, son of ex-Congressman Robert B. Roosevelt, to Miss Nannie Mitchell Vance, daughter of Hon. Samuel B. H. Vance, was solemnized at the Collegiate Dutch Reformed Church, Fifth-avenue and Forty-eighth street, yesterday afternoon." Samuel B.H. Vance, a Republican, was a manufacturer who served as Acting Mayor of New York City for the month of December 1874.