SAR Compatriot Presidents of the United States

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt became the twenty-sixth president of the United States upon the death of President William McKinley in 1901. At the age of forty-two, he was the youngest man to become an American president. Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 27, 1858. He graduated from Harvard University and attended law school. During the Spanish- American War, he led a daring charge up San Juan Hill and later received the Medal of Honor. In 1906, President Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the peace treaty between Russia and Japan.

Roosevelt joined the SAR on April 10, 1898, while he was the governor of New York. His Revolutionary War ancestor was Jacobus Roosevelt, who served as a captain in the New York Militia and who died in 1777. Jacobus Roosevelt’s son, Jacobus I. Roosevelt, served as a commissary for the entire war.

President Roosevelt died at Oyster Bay, New York, on January 6, 1919, at the age of sixty. He is buried in Youngs Memorial Cemetery in Oyster Bay, New York.