I want to hold up for praise and thanks a number of NPS professionals at the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites. Sarah Olson, superintendent of the site, welcomed me to the U.S. Park Service office in the Bellefield house. At Bellefield Anne Jordan, the chief curator, also made room in her busy schedule to talk with me about Eleanor Roosevelt. I will always remember her generous insights and encouragement. I thank especially Michele Ballos and Tara McGill, who allowed me to work at my best times in the NPS archive and generously copied documents. The Marion Dickerman Papers belong to the NPS archive, many of which were copied from the originals for the FDRL archives. In particular, NPS staff members Franceska Macsali Urbin and Frank Futral have been my most knowledgeable and generous compatriots in this journey to Val-Kill, and without them I would have been a lonely visitor. Franceska was a careful and generous reader from the beginning. Michele Ballos and Tara McGill welcomed me to work in the Marion Dickerman collection at the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, continued to send me many documents and images in the mail, and were always kind to answer more questions. I also had lovely walks at Val-Kill with Anna deCordova, NPS horticulturist, who is working to restore a sense of active use to Val-Kill circa 1950s. When I visited, the cutting garden restoration was complete and the staff was planning the swimming pool and tennis court restoration. Kathleen Durham, executive director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, was especially welcoming in her office near the historic site.
Many archivists in libraries, churches, and municipal offices have responded to my requests for information. I thank especially those at the Massena Museum in Massena, New York; Vassar College; Wellesley College; Smith College; Syracuse University; and Patterson Library, Westfield, New York. Jeanne Goodman and Jeri Diehl Cusack have provided information about the New Deal resettlement project at Arthurdale, West Virginia. My favorite library is always the Z. Smith Reynolds Library of Wake Forest University.
Encouragers have been Richard Cain, whose great-grandparents, Moses and Hattie Smith, rented land from FDR and who grew up at Val-Kill. Cain is the primary collector of Val-Kill furniture and pewter, has written a book about Val-Kill (Eleanor Roosevelt’s Val-Kill), and was always willing to help answer questions.
My friends are a wellspring of help and inspiration, as her friends were to Eleanor Roosevelt. I am always grateful to David Link, who refreshes my garden and my wood pile and brings me honey from his hives, which make a long workday especially pleasant. Special thanks to my friend Irv Gellman, who helped me write a better proposal after we met at a biography conference; Paula Duggan, Penelope Niven, Deanne Urmy, Barbara Hogenson, Robert Morgan, the members of my writers’ group, Bio Brio—Margaret Supplee Smith, Michele Gillespie, and Anna Rubino; Sue Quinn, Laura Fennell, Katherine Gill, Florence Gatten, Susan Whittington, Lawrence Womack, Jill Game Carraway, and Deborah Horning; Nick Bragg; members of the Ada Leake Myers Book Club and the Gang of Four; members of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church; members of the Democratic Party; Sudie Duncan Sides; Betty Nash McIver Luning, Heather Ross Miller, and Isabel Zuber; Howard Shields and Anne Kesler Shields; Louise Gossett; Ruth and Tom Mullen, Jean Burroughs, Martha Fleer, and Norma-Mae Isakow; Susan Faust and Betsy Gregg; Elen Knott, Marsha McGregor, Joanne Wyckoff, Rebecca McClanahan, Kenneth Frazelle, Rick Mashburn, Clifton and Anna Mathews, Kathryn Milam, and Jane Hatcher; my doctor, Heidi Klepin; and Korea Allah, my spiritual adviser. I learned from Eleanor Roosevelt how important it is to make new (younger) friends. I hold up for special thanks writer Helen Humphreys, whose research on my great-great-great-great-great grandmother, miraculously, brought her from Canada to North Carolina, connecting my interest in women’s history over two centuries.
It has been an honor to work with staff members of the University of North Carolina Press. I have had no finer editor than Mark Simpson-Vos, the kindest as well as the most astute. Jessica Newman and Mary Carley Caviness and freelance editor Trish Watson were exceptional in helping me ready the manuscript for publication. On the production and design side, Kim Bryant and Rich Hendel have been masters of the art.
I am especially grateful to Jackson Smith for help preparing the photographs.
My life is centered in my North Carolina home and family. They entertain, educate, and sustain me: Ed, my husband of fifty-three years and best reader, to whom this book is dedicated; Ed Wilson Jr. (Eddie) and Laurie Turnage Wilson, and their four children—Ed III (Buddy), Harry, Maria, and Eleanor (Ellie); Sally Wilson and Carolyn Stevenson; and Julie Wilson and John Steele. In them I know the meaning of love.
I could not have written this book without Mindy Conner, my genius book editor. Mindy, we did it, and are still friends (and neighbors). In editing and formatting the manuscript, you did what you promised—you carried me across the finish line.
Finally, I wrote this book in homage to Eleanor Roosevelt, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook, and to women everywhere whose friendships for one another have been a sustaining force in their lives.
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Summer 2016
TIMELINE
1884 Nancy Cook is born 26 August in Massena, New York.
1884 Eleanor Roosevelt is born 11 October in New York City.
1890 Marion Dickerman is born 11 April in Westfield, New York.
1892 Eleanor’s mother, Anna Hall Roosevelt, dies.
1894 Eleanor’s father, Elliott Roosevelt, dies.
1899–1902 Eleanor attends Allenswood in England.
1905 Eleanor marries Franklin D. Roosevelt 17 March in New York City.
1906 Daughter Anna is born 3 May.
1907 Son James is born 23 December.
1909 Son Franklin Jr. is born 18 March; dies 8 November.
1910 Son Elliott is born 23 September.
1912 Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman graduate from Syracuse University.
1913–18 Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman teach at Fulton High School in Fulton, New York.
1913 Eleanor, FDR, and family move to Washington, D.C., where FDR serves in the Wilson administration as assistant secretary of the navy.
1914 Son Franklin Jr. is born 17 August on Campobello Island.
1916 Son John is born 17 March.
1917–18 Eleanor volunteers with American Red Cross canteens in Washington, D.C., during World War I.
1918–19 Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman work at Endell Street Military Hospital in London.
1918 Eleanor discovers Lucy Mercer’s letters to Franklin.
1919 Marion Dickerman runs for New York State Assembly, losing but making a strong showing in a campaign managed by Nancy Cook.
1920 Congress passes the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote.
1921 Franklin is stricken with polio on Campobello Island.
1922 Eleanor joins the Women’s Trade Union League and the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee; she meets Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook.
1922 Marion Dickerman joins faculty at Todhunter School in New York City; Nancy Cook serves as executive secretary of the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee.
1923 Eleanor works with Esther Lape to organize the Bok Peace Prize competition and studies League of Women Voters issues with Lape’s partner, Elizabeth Read.
1924 Eleanor plays leading role in Al Smith’s third bid for New York governor.
1925 Eleanor edits Women’s Democratic News with Caroline O’Day, Marion Dickerman, Nancy Cook, and Elinor Morgenthau. The women travel together organizing Democratic women in New York State.
1925–26 Eleanor, Marion, and Nan build cottage on the Val-Kill at Hyde Park, celebrating completion 1 January 1926. They begin summer travels to Campobello Island with Roosevelt children.
1926 Franklin purchases property at Warm Springs, Georgia.
1926 Val-Kill furniture factory opens under Nan’s direction.
1927 Eleanor, Marion, and Nan (as a silent partner) purchase Todhunter School in New York City. Eleanor beg
ins teaching, later commuting from the governor’s mansion in Albany two and a half days a week.
1928–32 FDR is governor of New York.
1929 Eleanor, Marion, and Nan take youngest Roosevelt boys on a long European tour.
1932 FDR is elected president of the United States in November. Eleanor begins friendship with Lorena Hickok. Marion and Nan become part of the inner circle of White House family guests.
1932 Eleanor rents an apartment at 20th East 11th Street in Greenwich Village, a brownstone owned by Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read.
1933 Eleanor resigns from the faculty at Todhunter School as she becomes First Lady.
1933 FDR is inaugurated 4 March. On 6 March Eleanor hosts first weekly press conference for women reporters. Eleanor and Nan begin traveling to Arthurdale near Morgantown, West Virginia, to support resettlement housing project at Scotts Run.
1935 Eleanor begins “My Day” newspaper column 30 December.
1936 FDR is elected to a second term. Eleanor begins a paid lecture tour. Val-Kill furniture factory closes. Eleanor renovates the shop into a home for herself and her secretary, Malvina Thompson. Louis Howe, FDR’s friend and closest political adviser, dies.
1937 Eleanor publishes first volume of her autobiography, This Is My Story
1938 Eleanor withdraws her name from the Todhunter School. Eleanor, Marion, and Nan negotiate property settlements.
1939 Todhunter merges with the Dalton School, and Marion becomes associate principal.
1940 FDR is elected to a third term. Nan and Marion continue to help Eleanor host presidential picnics at Val-Kill.
1941 FDR Library at Hyde Park is dedicated. Nan resigns as executive secretary of the Women’s Division of the New York Democratic party. On 7 September Sara Delano Roosevelt dies; on 25 September Eleanor’s brother Hall Roosevelt dies.
1942 Marion leaves Todhunter (now merged with the Dalton School) and takes temporary teaching jobs.
1944 Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, private secretary to FDR, dies after having been several years incapacitated by illness.
1945 FDR is elected to a fourth term; he dies 12 April at Warm Springs. Eleanor is appointed U.S. delegate to the United Nations by President Harry S. Truman. On 21 November the family gives Springwood to the U.S. government to be maintained by the National Park Service.
1946–52 Elliott Roosevelt and his wife, Faye Emerson, move into Top Cottage, which FDR and Daisy Suckley had designed as their retirement home; Elliott goes into a farming operation with his mother. Elliott sells Top Cottage and other Roosevelt properties and leaves Hyde Park.
1947–51 Eleanor chairs the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations.
1947 Marion and Nan move to New Canaan, Connecticut, on 2 October.
1948 Eleanor presents Universal Declaration of Human Rights for adoption by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
1949 Elinor Morgenthau dies 21 September.
1952 John Roosevelt and his family move to Stone Cottage.
1953 Malvina Thompson dies 12 April.
1962 Nancy Cook dies in Trumbull, Connecticut, on 16 August. Eleanor dies in New York City on 7 November.
1970 John Roosevelt sells Stone Cottage. Elliott Roosevelt sells Top Cottage and other Roosevelt properties.
1973 Local citizens lead effort to save Eleanor’s home at Val-Kill from commercial development.
1977 Federal legislation creates the Eleanor Roosevelt National History Site at Val-Kill.
1981 Esther Lape dies 17 May.
1983 Marion Dickerman dies in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 16 May.
1984 Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site dedicated.
2014 Stone Cottage exhibit “Eleanor Roosevelt and Val-Kill: Emergence of a Political Leader” opens.
NOTES
Abbreviations
AERP Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, N.Y.,
CCOH Columbia Center for Oral History, Butler Library, New York, N.Y.
ER Eleanor Roosevelt
EROHP Eleanor Roosevelt Oral History Project, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, N.Y.
ERPP Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/
FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FDRL Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, N.Y.
MD Marion Dickerman
MDP Marion Dickerman Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, N.Y.
NC Nancy Cook
Prologue
1. Quoted in Morris, Miss Wylie of Vassar, 154.
2. ER, Autobiography, 427. I have found the 2014 Harper Perennial reprint of this book to be the most useful for today’s readers, available in paperback and on Kindle.
Chapter One
1. Quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet, 153–54. The descriptions of Hyde Park are based on factual evidence and visits to the places described. The history of James and Sara Delano Roosevelt is told in many sources. I found especially useful Ward, Before the Trumpet; Davis, FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny; and Steeholm and Steeholm, House at Hyde Park. Fredriksen, Our Local Heritage, is also useful, as is a short history of St. James Episcopal Church given me by the Reverend Chuck Kramer and an interview with the Reverend Gordon Kidd, in EROHP. Suckley, “Day at Hyde Park,” has a unique perspective and is not often cited. Moody, FDR and His Hudson Valley Neighbors, includes a good deal of information.
2. ER, “My Day,” 24 August 1936. All of ER’s “My Day” columns are available at ERPP.
3. In using the word “crippled,” which some today regard as offensive, I am following the lead of James Tobin (Man He Became, 9), who chose “after a good deal of thought” to describe FDR’s disability in the language used at the time.
Chapter Two
1. Blanche Wiesen Cook begins her three-volume biography of ER by quoting what those who met ER described as her effect upon an audience—“her very presence lit up the room” (Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:1–2). I have heard her effect upon an audience similarly described by my fellow alumnae at the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (present-day UNC-Greensboro), where ER often visited her friend Dean Harriet Elliott. The 1922 meeting of ER and NC at a political fund-raiser for the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee is briefly described in several sources. A place to begin is Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:319–20. I have researched the lives of MD and NC in many available sources, including my correspondence with NC’s family; the Massena Museum in Massena, New York; the Patterson Library of Westfield, New York; and ERPP. Published sources of particular use are Davis, Invincible Summer; and Lash, Eleanor and Franklin.
2. Quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 278.
3. ER to Isabella Greenway, 26 October 1919, in Miller and McGinnis, Volume of Friendship, 170.
4. Isabella Greenway to ER, 29 December 1921, in ibid., 185.
5. The story of the romance of FDR and Lucy Mercer (Rutherfurd) is told in many places. One of the most recent retellings is Rowley, Franklin and Eleanor.
6. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:292–93.
7. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 278.
8. Quoted in Roosevelt, Grandmère, 37.
9. ER to FDR, 29 June 1922, FDRL. Blanche Wiesen Cook and other Roosevelt scholars often cite FDRL letters only by name and date, a style I have followed here. The Roosevelt archives at FDRL contain finding aids that will enable readers to search the collections further; my research has been made challenging because there is no single source or concentrated batch of detailed information pertaining to the time period that is the focus of this book. Materials are scattered across the vast holdings, and often one document appears in different collections. Staff members are especially helpful in this process. Most of the letters used in this book are from the papers of ER, FDR, and MD, and my citations to those collections should be
the most useful to readers.
10. Quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 261.
11. MD oral history, CCOH. I have not included page numbers to the MD oral history at CCOH because they are either missing from the transcripts or altered and therefore are very difficult to follow. Much of the same material appears in interviews by Kenneth S. Davis published in Invincible Summer, for which I do give page numbers.
12. Davis, Invincible Summer, 17.
13. “Massena Girl Associated with Mrs. Roosevelt in Unique Shop,” n.d., vertical file, Massena History Museum, Massena, N.Y.
14. Davis, Invincible Summer, 4.
15. ER, Autobiography, 123.
16. Ibid., 143.
17. Quoted in Davis, Invincible Summer, 31.
18. Frances Perkins oral history, CCOH. The CCOH website (http://library.columbia.edu/locations/ccoh.html) has an excellent search engine directing readers to specific pages of this long digital transcription.
The Three Graces of Val-Kill Page 19