James I. Roosevelt

James John Roosevelt, known as James I. (December 14, 1795 – April 5, 1875) was an American politician, jurist, businessman, and member of the Roosevelt family.

Career An active Democrat, he campaigned for Andrew Jackson for president in 1828. He was elected alderman in 1828 and 1830, was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1835 and 1840.

Congress Roosevelt served in the United States House of Representatives from 1841 to 1843, but declined to seek reelection. He also was a judge of the Superior Court of the City of New York. After James Parker Barnett, a student of French Creole heritage, had completed two of the three years of required lectures to obtain a degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, a Southern student complained he was "colored" and Barnett was expelled from the institution. In 1853, Roosevelt ruled a writ issued by John W. Edmonds that ordered the institution to readmit Barnett to be invalid. James and Cornelia were the parents of eleven children, all but three of whom died in childhood or early adulthood. Their children were: and widow of James S. Talbot. Marcia Ouseley Roosevelt (1847–1906), who married Edward Brooks Scovel, an opera singer, in 1877. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Cornelia Roosevelt died in Paris on February 14, 1876.

Roosevelt's estate was worth in excess of at the time of his death, and left funds for his family and the family of his wife.

Descendants His granddaughter, Cornelia Roosevelt, through his son Charles Yates Roosevelt, married Baron Clemens von Zedlitz of Prussia in 1889, who drowned in a collision with the German emperor's yacht in 1901.