“History” is a constantly growing body of knowledge, and it happened to be my least favorite subject in high school. It always bored me and I could never get the dates right, not to mention textbooks just never seemed to make the past seem interesting. Today, however, I love it and wish I had paid a little bit more attention. While there is so much that we may never know about the past because it was never documented, there are many mistakes that we can learn from, stories that can entertain us, and examples that can lead us. They are just sitting on pages waiting to be found. So, in an effort to get some of you all a little bit more excited about the past and to learn some new things myself, I’ll be sharing little pieces of interesting history with you for the remainder of the semester! Some may be a bit odd, some my be cool, and some my leave you just a little bit confused. No matter what, I hope you learn something new and interesting about how we got to where we are today.
This week we are going to take a very small look into the life of Eleanor Roosevelt. I’m sure a few of us have done reports on her in our years of education and thus have some pretty basic knowledge about her life. You probably know that she was the longest serving First Lady of the United States and that she is remembered as being a politician and humanitarian. But here are some things you may not have known (or may have just forgotten):
1. Teddy Roosevelt (26th President of the United States) was Eleanor’s uncle and walked her down the aisle at her wedding to her fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Quite the family affair, huh?)
2. Eleanor was a politician and humanitarian. Some of her accomplishments include being the first First Lady to hold a press conference, fighting for women’s rights, and serving as a delegate to the United Nations.
3. Her mother-in-law was very overbearing. Definitely an inlaw nightmare with an extreme attachment to her son.
4. Mrs. Roosevelt was not always the independent woman and social warrior that she grew to be. While her marriage did not define her, FDR’s views are what influenced her to fight for women’s rights and break the mold.
Eleanor Roosevelt was a complex woman, and I happen to think that she’s pretty cool. While there are some parts of her life that I may not be completely comfortable with, she is definitely someone worth reading about. She, along with her family, undoubtedly shaped society in a way that we can still see today. But above all else, Eleanor was human. She grew and changed throughout her lifetime. She was not born the great humanitarian that she became but through her evolution we gained a role model.
For more information and fun facts, check the links below where I found these tidbits!
http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-roosevelts
http://www.history.com/topics/first-ladies/eleanor-roosevelt
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/eleanor-biography/