Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/121



Until the inauguration of , forty-seven was the age of our youngest president, General Grant. With the further exceptions of Polk, Pierce, Garfield, and Cleveland, no other had been under fifty. Roosevelt was not quite forty-three. Of twenty-seven presidents, he was the fifth whom death, instead of election, placed in the White House.

Theodore Roosevelt was born October 27, 1858, in his father's house, which was No. 28 East 20th Street, New York city. Like most of his predecessors in office, he comes of a family which has been American since early colonial times. For two hundred and fifty years New York has been the native soil of the Roosevelts. Since they made their beginnings in the colonies, they have been plentifully represented in public life and in good works; and a study of former Roosevelts shows them to have attained distinction as fighters, as writers, in politics, and in philanthropy. It would seem that President Roosevelt drew from all these ancestral sources the qualities that have so forcibly marked his career.