Red Cross Documents: TLs, "Mabel T. Boardman," and 2 of ER's Refreshment Corps cards filled out in autograph.
American Red Cross, District of Columbia
Roosevelt, Eleanor. Red Cross Documents, 1917.
Membership Cards, American Red Cross, District of Columbia
3 x 5” printed card, completed in autograph: Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt is hereby appointed a member of company a refreshment corps. Signed by the Chairman Women’s Volunteer Aid, Mabel L. Boardruan, and the Commander General Women’s Volunteer Aid, Mary Nurrill Serth.
3 x 5” printed card, completed in autograph: Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt is hereby appointed Captain of …Refreshment Corps. Signed by Marie D. Gorgar for the Women’s Volunteer Aid, and Edyth M. Horline, Commander General Women’s Volunteer Aid.
Together with:
Typed memorandum signed, “H.D. Lamar,” February 13, 1917, two leaves of Navy Department letterhead.
Together with:
Typed letter signed, “S.M. Gowan,” Paymaster General to the Navy, February 13, 1917, one leaf of Navy Department letterhead.
Lamar’s memo discusses the sartorial needs of the men on watch in the Atlantic Fleet, as determined by two boards of inquiry. Gowan’s letter notes progress made as per Lamar’s memo, and forwards samples of Navy uniform gloves and socks.
Together with:
Typed letter signed, “Mabel T. Boardman,” March 1, 1917, one leaf of American Red Cross letterhead. Discusses financial predicament due to the need to purchase wool for socks and “helmets” for hospitals.
FDR was sworn-in as Assistant Secretary of the Navy on March 17, 1913—the eighth anniversary of his marriage to Eleanor. By the time he left office some seven years later, that marriage, and both of their lives, had been radically changed. We can see in this collection, in embryonic form, the transition of ER from a mere social appendage to her publicly active husband, into a committed, active woman in her own right.
Most of the letters reflect the endless rounds of visits and receptions that were part of Washington social life. ER surely had little enthusiasm for these tedious, tea-sipping encounters, but she conducted them with her usual methodical diligence. Four days a week she set out in a carriage with a case of calling cards in her lap, trying to make twenty to thirty calls a day. She strictly limited herself to six minutes per visit, with each day reserved for a specific branch of Washington officialdom: on Mondays, Supreme Court wives; Tuesdays, congressional wives; Thursday, Cabinet members, and Fridays, diplomats. The volume of invitations she received was so immense that not even Eleanor Roosevelt could keep them all, as the many declinations here attest.
The “thank you” card from First Lady Edith Bolling Wilson comes from a historic moment in the life of her and her husband: they were about to return for the final round of peace talks in Paris that resulted in the disastrous Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The “journey together” which Mrs. Wilson refers to was a mid-February 1919 voyage from France to America, when President and Mrs. Wilson returned from the first round of the talks. The Roosevelts had traveled to France in January as part of the American contingent, but neither FDR nor Eleanor played any substantive role in the delegation. They sailed back with the President and Mrs. Wilson aboard the USS George Washington in February, with Wilson and his wife promptly returning to France—now equipped with the carrying case from Eleanor--after attending to some business in the capital.
The Red Cross documents signal ER’s move into active, energetic public service. Starting in the fall of 1917, she worked three days a week at the Red Cross canteen at Union Station in Washington, rising at 5 a.m. to hand out sandwiches and coffee to the thousands of young soldiers who passed through the terminal on the way to France. She also gave them postcards which she later collected and censored before sending through the mail. She was a tireless worker and she contemptuously noticed how few of the women from her social set wer
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