This portrait of then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt was made in December 1933. Photo by Elias Goldensky/public domain, Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/96523441)
Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt emigrated from the Netherlands to Nieuw Amsterdam (now New York City) by 1649, perhaps as early as 1638. The family name, “van Rosenvelt,” meant “from the rose field.”
That’s apparently a reference to flowers on family estates in the Netherlands. About 1652, van Rosenvelt bought a farm in what is now the area of Midtown Manhattan that includes the Empire State Building.
Van Rosenvelt’s children dropped “van” and spelled their last name “Roosevelt.” One of them, Nicholas, was the first Roosevelt to hold political office in the New World. He was an alderman.
The family prospered. It became the dominant American political dynasty of the first half of the 20th century, producing two presidents, Theodore (1901–09) and Franklin (1933–45). Teddy, a Republican, and Franklin, a Democrat, were fifth cousins. Franklin’s wife, Eleanor, was his fifth cousin once removed as well as Teddy’s niece.
The family also produced several other politicians, military officers, government officials, and CIA officers. It remains prominent even today. Teddy’s great-grandsons include Mark Roosevelt, a former Massachusetts state legislator who is president of the Santa Fe, New Mexico, campus of St. John’s College, and Tweed Roosevelt, chairman of Roosevelt China Investments.
Kermit Roosevelt III, a great-great-grandson of Teddy’s, is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York, includes a Rose Garden where both Franklin and Eleanor are buried, along with two of FDR’s dogs, a Scottish terrier named Fala and a German shepherd named Chief.