Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the oldest child and only daughter
of Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt, was born in New York on May 3, 1906. As a child,
Anna was closer to her father than her mother, although
her relationship with ER improved as Anna matured. During
the last seventeen years of ER's life, they were very close
and wrote each other often.
Anna's early childhood was difficult. As the oldest child
she was aware of the conflict between ER and her grandmother,
Sara Delano Roosevelt,
as well as the difficulties her parents experienced in the
aftermath of her father's relationship with ER's social
secretary, Lucy Mercer. FDR's
battle with polio and the close relationship political advisor
Louis Howe enjoyed with both her parents further upset Anna.
After briefly attending Cornell University, Anna married
for the first time in 1926 partly to escape her family situation.
She and her husband, New York stockbroker Curtis Dall, had
two children Anna Eleanor ("Sistie") and Curtis ("Buzzie")
who lived in the White House with their mother in 1933-34.
By that time, Anna was seeking both a divorce and financial
independence. She began working as a writer, a career she
continued after her second marriage to journalist John Boettiger
in 1936. Together they worked on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
until 1943 when Boettiger went into the military and Anna
returned to the White House as her father's confidential
assistant. She accompanied FDR to Yalta and served as White
House hostess during ER's absence. Anna also facilitated
Roosevelt's meetings with Lucy Mercer, which greatly angered
ER and briefly strained their relationship.
After the war Anna and Boettiger attempted to run a newspaper
in Arizona. The effort failed, and the couple separated
in 1947 after more than ten years of marriage and one child.
(They were divorced in 1949, and Boettiger later committed
suicide.) To help Anna with her debts, ER agreed to join
her on an ABC radio discussion program that aired give days
a week for thirty-nine weeks before the network dropped
it in 1949 because no sponsors could be found.
In 1952, Anna married Dr. James Halsted, a physician with
the Veterans Administration. Thereafter, she worked in medical
public relations and helped her husband with his work. After
ER's death in 1962 Anna was active with organizations and
causes that her mother had supported, including Americans
for Democratic Action, the United
Nations Association of the United States and the Wiltwyck
School. Anna also served as a board member of the Eleanor
Roosevelt Memorial Foundation. She died in New York in 1975.
Sources:
Asbell, Bernard, ed. Mother and Daughter: The Letters
of Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt. New York: Fromm
International Publishing Corporation, 1988, 30-31,
41, 277.
Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C. Schulman and Henry R. Beasley,
eds. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001, 222-226.
Caroli, Betty Boyd. The Roosevelt Women. New
York: Basic Books, 1998, 262, 277, 287, 375.