Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children

by Barbara Frank

We all want to make history come alive for our kids. We remember the dry textbooks and boring lectures of our youth that left us with little to remember in the way of historical facts, and we don’t want to repeat that method with our own children.

There’s plenty of great curriculum available to teach history in an interesting way; the trouble is finding something that works for us and our children.

During our 25 years of homeschooling, there were a few books and curriculum we used that really stand out in my mind as being wonderful. One was a book I stumbled onto; I happened to see it at the public library and took it out because I wanted to read it. But once I began, I decided to read it aloud with my kids and they enjoyed it as much as I did.

The book is called Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children. President Roosevelt (or TR, as he was often called) led an exciting and interesting life, full of accomplishment. But he considered his greatest accomplishments to be his children, and he loved them very much.

He wrote most of the letters in this 250-page collection to them, complete with engaging illustrations that he drew. Other letters were written to close family members and friends about his children. Reading through these letters gives the reader an intimate look into the life of a presidential family at the turn of the 20th century.

Throughout the book, it’s clear that TR made his family his top priority. Here’s what he wrote to his son Kermit, who was away at school, in November 1903:

“To-night while I was preparing to dictate a message to Congress concerning the boiling cauldron on the Isthmus of Panama, which has now begun to bubble over, up came one of the ushers with a telegram from you and Ted about the football match. Instantly I bolted into the next room to read it aloud to mother and sister, and we all cheered in unison when we came to the Rah! Rah! Rah! part of it. It was a great score. I wish I could have seen the game.”

Knowing history makes some of the funnier letters quite poignant. For example, here’s TR’s description of evenings at the White House:

“Archie and Quentin are really great playmates. One night I came up-stairs and found Quentin playing the pianola as hard as he could, while Archie would suddenly start from the end of the hall where the pianola was, and, accompanied by both the dogs, race as hard as he could the whole length of the White House clean to the other end of the hall and then tear back again. Another evening as I came up-stairs I found Archie and Quentin having a great play, chuckling with laughter, Archie driving Quentin by his suspenders, which were fixed to the end of a pair of woolen reins. Then they would ambush me and we would have a vigorous pillow-fight, and after five or ten minutes of this we would go into Mother’s room, and I would read them the book Mother had been reading them, “The Legend of Montrose.”

Quentin was the president’s youngest son (and said to be his favorite) who would die a hero’s death in World War I at the age of 20. TR died a mere six months later.

The book leaves you with a clear picture of TR the family man, and includes many true stories that my children loved. While there are a few books currently in print that include these letters along with forewords written by their editors, you can also obtain the entire book of letters free online because they’re out of copyright. Just go HERE.