Background
In looking at our church bulletin for the coming week, I noticed that
our senior citizen’s group, Thursday Fellowship, was going to be having their
monthly meeting. The “speaker” was going to be an actress doing a dramatic presentation
of Eleanor Roosevelt. I had just watched a YouTube clip of an old program from 1953 of “What’s My Line” where Eleanor was the mystery guest. With
all of my deep roots in the early years of America, this got me to wondering if
I could find a genealogical connection to Eleanor.
Presidential Trivia
I’ve written earlier about how I am connected to all 45 US presidents
(*1). And that would have included Eleanor’s husband, FDR, as well as Theodore
Roosevelt (and Eleanor). That would have made me a 20th+ cousin with
a common ancestor back in the 13th century. But I wasn’t looking for
that type of distant connection. I wanted something a bit closer and more
personal.
There are two Roosevelts who were presidents. Theodore Roosevelt (26th
president) was an uncle of Eleanor, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (32nd
president) was Eleanor’s 5th cousin in addition to being her
husband. So Teddy and Franklin were 4th cousins. That’s much closer
than the relationship between Andrew Johnson (17th president) and
Lyndon Johnson (36th president) who were 10th cousins,
but not nearly as close as the relationship between John Adams (2nd
president) and John Quincy Adams (6th president), who were father
and son. If Hillary Clinton would have been elected recently she and her
husband Bill (42nd president) would have been even closer.
Eleanor’s legal name was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, but from an early age
preferred to be called by her middle name, probably because her mother’s name
was also Anna. Her mother died when she was 8 and her father before she turned
10. Her paternal grandparents had both passed before she was born, so she was raised
by her maternal grandparents.
Searching for a Connection
I began by building a family tree for Eleanor using publicly available
information (such as *2), as well as other family trees in ancestry.com. Since
I knew that there were no Roosevelts in my family tree, I initially
concentrated on her mother’s family lines. I followed each of them back to the
1600s or whenever that line came to America. While I did find a few family
names that were also in my own family tree, none of them intersected. Most of
her ancestors were in New York, but mine are primarily in Connecticut or
Massachusetts. I then moved to her father’s family lines, following all the
wives who married into the Roosevelt family. I was still not finding any
connections. But when I reached her great-grandfather, something clicked.
An Unexpected Find
Eleanor’s great-grandfather was Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt
(1794-1871) (*3). While that may not seem significant to most people, it was to
me. It was a common practice for people to have a middle name that is their
mother’s maiden name, and I quickly noted that Cornelius’s mother was Maria
Helen Van Schaack, and that “He was the last full-blooded Dutch Roosevelt of
his line.”
My wife’s family, Van De Car, were also Dutch and came to what was then
New Holland in the early-mid 1600s. And one of the early marriages was between
a Van Der Karre (as they then spelled the name) and a Van Schaack (*4). It only
took a few more minutes of research to determine that Maria’s great-grandfather
was Claas Van Schaack (1635-1709) and that he was the same individual who is my
wife’s great*8 grandfather. Both the Van Der Karre and Van Schaack families
lived in the Hudson River Valley in Kinderhook, NY (also the birthplace of president
Martin Van Buren).
Thus, while Eleanor may not be closely related to me, she is my wife’s
6th cousin, 3 times removed. I had found what I was looking for –
and it took less than two hours. I love genealogy!
Notes:
No comments:
Post a Comment