The Pets that President Theodore Roosevelt Had
By: Tippy & Alfred
As a very early student of natural history Teddy Roosevelt
not only had a museum of the animals that he hunted but kept
a menagerie of pets as well. Part of the menagerie was a calico pony
named Algonquin and a gold macaw parrot named Eli Yale.
Algonquin the pony was allowed inside the White House and
once rode the elevator to visit Theodore's son Archie while
he was sick. These two pets are the most well-known of the
President's pets but he and his family also had many more.
Other pets include Pete the Bull Terrier, Skip the Rat
Terrier, Blackjack the Manchester Terrier, Manchu the
Pekingese, Rollow the
Saint Bernard, Sailor Boy the
Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Gem and Susan. All the above are
dogs owned by the family. They also had two cats named Tom
Quartz and Slippers, and Emily Spinach, a Garter Snake.
Aside from Algonquin they also had another pony named
Fidelity. The household also included Maude the pig, Josiah
the Badger, Jonathan the piebald rat, and several Guinea
Pigs named Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans and
Father O'Grady. Baron Spreckle was their hen and they also
had a one legged rooster (name unknown).
Theodore Roosevelt was the twenty-sixth President of the
United States. He was part of the Progressive Movement and a
leader of the Republican Party. During the Spanish-American
War "Teddy" Roosevelt helped to organize the famous Rough
Riders, a Volunteer Cavalry Regiment.
He returned to New York after the Spanish-American War as a
hero and was elected Governor of New York in 1899. He was
known for his eclectic interests in the fields of
naturalism, history, and law. He explored the Amazon Basin
and wrote thirty-five books about political history, the
outdoors, the American frontier, natural history, naval
history and even his own autobiography. He was elected to
the Vice Presidency at the age of forty-two and was known as
a model for men during his reign as President. After William
McKinney's Assassination he became President of the United
States.
As a Progressive, President Roosevelt broke up several
monopolies and enacted the conservation movement in order to
help preserve and make more efficient use of natural
resources. Roosevelt did not like big business and illegal
practices and distrusted corporations. Even with this
outlook he was still fair and just when it came to dealing
with companies. He enacted the "Square Deal" that regulated
railroad fares and pure food and drugs and that affected not
only the regular citizen but the businessman.
In 1906 he went after big business in court and suggested
that the courts were biased against labor unions. Because of
this he broke his friendship with William Howard Taft, his
Vice President at the time. Despite the overwhelming
positive popular vote for Teddy Roosevelt's reelection,
William Howard Taft succeeded to President after Roosevelt's
first elected term due to his winning a majority in the
Electoral College. Roosevelt ran again for President in
1911, and because of this he split the Republican vote in
half between him and Taft so that a Democrat succeeded after
President Taft's first term.
The most historically significant event that President
Roosevelt accomplished during his term was to successfully
negotiate for the control of the Panama Canal in 1904. He
was also the only President to win the Nobel Prize and the
Peace Prize for negotiating for peace in the Russo-Japan
War.
When Theodore Roosevelt was a young man of twenty-two he
married Alice Hathaway Lee, who was just eighteen. It was
Alice who gave Theodore the nickname of Teddy, but, although
it caught on with the media and so the public, he never
liked the nickname and friends and family called him T.R.
instead. Four years later, two days after giving birth to
their daughter and only child, also named Alice, his wife
died from an undiagnosed kidney disease. Theodore's mother
died on the same day of Typhoid Fever. Their daughter Alice
was given over to Theodore's older sister and nurses to
raise and Theodore Roosevelt moved to North Dakota to start
a cattle ranch. After all the cattle died in a freak snow
storm he moved back to New York and built a place there.
After he was elected President he married his second wife
and high school sweetheart Edith Carow and had five more
children as a result of that marriage.
Theodore Roosevelt Junior died of a Coronary Embolism that
took him in his sleep on January 6, 1919. The man remained
active despite many health problems and lived a full life.
Woodrow Wilson's vice President at the time, Thomas R.
Marshall, said of Roosevelt's death, "Death had to take
Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would
have been a fight."
His face is carved with those of Washington, Jefferson and
Lincoln on Mount Rushmore, and scholars rank him from third
to seventh on the list of the greatest American Presidents.
He was certainly one of the most interesting, and he
probably holds the record for the most Presidential Pets.
Splendid Plush Dogs and Animals
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