This collection (8 items) contains correspondence and other items related to the Latrobe and Roosevelt families, who lived in New York City and Skaneateles, New York, in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The collection's 5 dated items include 2 letters from Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt to her brother and sister-in-law, John H. B. and Charlotte Latrobe, in which she apologized for her previous inconsistency in writing letters and provided news of her children and of the winter of 1844-1845 (February 22, 1820, and January 25, 1845). Nicholas J. Roosevelt wrote a brief letter to John H. B. Latrobe about the Sellon family's new address following their move to Franker's Grove, Illinois (March 17, 1843). A typed letter attributed to G. A. Cormack, the secretary of the Corinthian Yacht Club of New York, shares the club's condolences after Nicholas Latrobe Roosevelt's death in 1892. The final dated item is an article from Country Life entitled "George Washington: Country Gentleman," which reprints excerpts from Benjamin Henry Latrobe's diary of a visit to Mount Vernon (December 1921, volume 41).
The collection includes 3 undated items. The first is a note regarding a picture of Washington, D.C. The remaining 2 items relate to Nicholas J. Roosevelt's steamboat voyage on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in 1811: a typescript by his great-grandson Henry Latrobe Roosevelt and a manuscript providing a firsthand account of early steamboat travel.
Nicholas Jacobus Roosevelt was born in New York City in 1767, the son of Jacobus Roosevelt and Annatje Bogaert. He lived in New York City and in Skaneateles, New York, where he was an inventor and manufacturer. In 1811, he made the first steamboat voyage along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. On November 15, 1808, he married Lydia Latrobe, the daughter of John Henry Latrobe, and they had nine children: Henry Latrobe, Samuel, Rosetta Mark, Mary Louise, Lydia Eliza, Julia Adeline, Ellen Ann Maria, Louis, and James Nicholas. Nicholas J. Roosevelt died on July 30, 1854.
Samuel Roosevelt, the son of Nicholas J. Roosevelt and Lydia Latrobe, was born in New York City on December 9, 1813, and became a businessman. He and his wife, May Jane Horton, were married on September 3, 1878, and had eight children: Nicholas Latrobe, Laura Gertrude, Ellen Lydia, Mary Leontine, Samuel Montgomery, Virginia, Frank, and Florence. Nicholas Latrobe Roosevelt was born on June 11, 1847, and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in the late 1860s. He served in the navy until 1874, and retired as a lieutenant. He and his wife, Eleanor Dean, married on April 14, 1874, and had two children: Henry Latrobe and Louisa Dean. Nicholas Latrobe Roosevelt died in 1892.
Henry Latrobe Roosevelt graduated from the United States Naval Academy, and served in the navy during the Spanish-American War. He later transferred to the United States Marine Corps and served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He married Eleanor Morrow on January 15, 1902. Henry Latrobe Roosevelt died on February 22, 1936.
