A Second Look
By Richard Cashman
Some people believe you can see a young Theodore Roosevelt viewing Lincoln’s Funeral from a window in his grandfather’s house. It’s a fun story, but is it true?
It all started with this photograph showing the back of TR’s grandfather’s house on Broadway. If you look carefully you can see two images in an open window on the second floor. Some people believe that’s Theodore Roosevelt and his brother Elliott. However, when you enlarge the photo neither image looks anything like a young TR.
At the time of Lincoln’s death Theodore Roosevelt's grandfather was a widower sharing his home with his son James, his wife Elizabeth and their 4 children; two boys and two girls. If it is a Roosevelt in the rear window and not a chambermaid with a bun in her hair, it could be one of TR’s nieces, or nephews living in the house at the time.
Lincoln was one of TR’s heroes, his presidential standard of comparison, but neither he nor his brother ever said they saw the funeral. You won't find it in the Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress. It’s not in his autobiography and while TR wrote more words than Shakespeare, Faulkner, Hemingway, Dickens and Melville combined, there isn't one word on seeing Lincoln’s casket. It’s not in any article, column, or speech including the one he gave in 1903 standing before Lincoln’s grave at Oak Ridge Cemetery. It doesn’t appear in any of his over 150,000 letters and it's not in the Roosevelt Collection at Harvard. TR got to know Lincoln's only surviving son Robert, but there's no record he told Robert he saw his father's funeral.
If TR never said he saw the funeral where did it come from? It came from one person and one person only. It came from photojournalist Stefan Lorant. Lorant was collecting images of Lincoln in the New York Public Library when he came across the photo of TR’s grandfather’s house. It was Lorant who first speculated it could be a young Theodore Roosevelt looking out the window.
Lorant was a man with a larger than life persona, but he was also a man with a reputation for being reckless with the truth. He said he came to America after being mistreated in Britain, but associates claim he fled from being investigated for tax evasion. He claimed he gave Marlene Dietrich her first screen test, but the story has no verification and even his biographers consider it another one of his myth making tall tales. He was caught using historically inaccurate images to shape public opinion. For decades he claimed he had a photo of Lincoln shown in an open casket until it was positively proven to be an 1868 photo of Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stephens
Lorant said he visited TR’s widow Edith to ask if it was her husband looking out the window.
On the day of the funeral Edith was 3 years, 8 months, 2 weeks and 5 days old. On the day Lorant said he showed Edith the photograph she was 84 and not at her best. According to Edith’s biographer, Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith was having difficulty balancing her checkbook and needed help writing letters. She mistook her grandson for the son she lost shot down over France in WWI. Oyster Bay resident Jessica Kraft was hired to help Edith pay the bills and keep up with her correspondence.
Lorant said Edith looked at the photo, hesitated and then replied, “Yes, I think that is my husband and next to him his brother.” He said Edith then told him she was there at the house, but isn't in the photo because when she began to cry TR locked her in a back room until the funeral was over.
It was a remarkable revelation coming from the wife of Theodore Roosevelt. It was pay dirt. It instantly turned Lorant's photograph into pure gold. Yet, Lorant who made his living publishing photographs, elected to wait until after Edith’s death before making his discovery public.
Edith died in 1948. Lorant published the image in the June 1955 issue of American Heritage Magazine and again in 1959 in his book, “The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt.”
Lorant prevented history from hearing Edith’s side of the story while she was alive and in her own words. She never wrote Lorant came to visit and never mentioned seeing the photograph. It doesn't appear in a letter, or an entry in her diary. Lorant made himself the only source. It’s a remarkable recollection from an 84 year old remembering the details of an event that took place 81 years earlier when she was a 3 ½ year old preschooler learning shapes and colors. The recollection becomes even more remarkable knowing Edith forgot how to balance her checkbook.
In the 14 years Edith watched her husband being carved into Mt. Rushmore she never said a word she was with TR the day he saw Lincoln’s Funeral from a window in his grandfather’s house. Did it happen? A lot of people say it did. You decide. It’s what makes history so much fun. It’s a great detective story.
