James Roosevelt (1828-1900), FDR’s father, was born into a wealthy Knickerbocker family at Mount Hope, his grandfather’s estate in Dutchess County, New York.  James was tutored at home, attended private schools in Poughkeepsie and Lee, Massachusetts, and graduated Union College in 1847. He earned his law degree from Harvard, entered business and married Rebecca Howland in 1854. They had a son, James Roosevelt Roosevelt and moved to Springwood in Hyde Park, New York, in 1867. James became involved in the railroad and coal businesses, but family and community obligations were more important to him.

Rebecca died in 1876, and he married Sara Delano in 1880 when he was fifty-six and she was twenty-three. When FDR was born in 1882, James was his constant companion, took him on trips, and introduced him to many important people. James suffered his first of several heart attacks in 1891, but he continued to take an interest in everything his son did. FDR was a Harvard freshman when his father died in 1900.

This photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt with his father James Roosevelt was taken in 1883 when FDR was sixteen months old.