Sara Roosevelt

Sara Ann Roosevelt ( Delano; September 21, 1854 – September 7, 1941) was the second wife of James Roosevelt I (from 1880), the mother of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States and her only child, and subsequently the mother-in-law of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Delano was born and raised in Newburgh, New York, and spent three years in Hong Kong. She gave birth to Franklin in 1882, and was a devoted mother to him for the remainder of her life, including home-schooling and living close by in adulthood. She had a complex relationship with her daughter-in-law Eleanor, which has led to media portrayals of her as a domineering and fearsome mother-in-law, though these are at odds with other views. She died in 1941, with her son, then the President, at her side.

Childhood

Sara Delano was born at the Delano Estate in the town of Newburgh, New York, to Warren Delano Jr. and Catherine Robbins Lyman. She had ten siblings, two of whom died as small children. Three more died in their twenties.

In 1862, Sara, her mother Catherine, and six brothers and sisters traveled to Hong Kong on the clipper ship Surprise, where they joined Warren Delano who had resumed his business of trading in opium, then still legal. On board ship, Sara enjoyed spending time in the sailmaker's loft listening to the sailmaker tell sea stories. Her brother Fred discovered Catherine's journal of the voyage many years later, in 1928. In 1865, she moved with her family back to Newburgh. She was educated at home, aside from a brief period in a girls' school in Dresden, Germany in 1876.

Franklin Roosevelt never had a home of his own that was separate from his mother's prior to her death. "Minutes after her death, the largest oak tree at Hyde Park toppled to the ground. It was a clear windless day."

The funeral was held at Springwood. The President can be seen wearing a black mourning band on his arm in photographs of him later signing the declaration of war against Japan. His mother's memory is commemorated with the Sara Delano Roosevelt Park in New York City's Lower East Side, which was dedicated during her lifetime, in 1934. She was buried next to her husband in the churchyard at St. James Episcopal Church in Hyde Park.

In 2003, the City University of New York announced they would restore Roosevelt's former home, now known as the Sara Delano Roosevelt Memorial House, on 47 East 65th Street, where she lived from 1908 until her death.

Cultural depictions Roosevelt has been portrayed on television, on screen, in Broadway players by numerous actresses. Notable portrayals include: Sunrise at Campobello (1960) by Ann Shoemaker, from which her image as a domineering mother-in-law evolved. Portrayed by Anne Seymour in the original 1958 Broadway play of the same name. Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and its sequel The White House Years (1977) by Rosemary Murphy Warm Springs (2005) by Jane Alexander Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) by Elizabeth Wilson The First Lady (2022) by Ellen Burstyn, which shows a complex relationship between Sara and her daughter-in-law Eleanor, something closer to reality.