Early Life and Courtship By Theodore Roosevelt
Born in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, the daughter of Caroline Watts (née Haskell) and George Cabot Lee, a prominent banker, Alice was tall for the era at 5'7", charming, active, and strikingly beautiful. With "blue-gray eyes and long, wavy golden hair", she was called "Sunshine" by her family and friends, because of her cheerful disposition. Theodore was smitten by her.
She met Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt on October 18, 1878, at the home of her next-door neighbors, the Saltonstalls; T.R. was a classmate of young Richard Saltonstall (her cousin) at Harvard University. Of their first encounter, he would write, "As long as I live, I shall never forget how sweetly she looked, and how prettily she greeted me."
For young T.R. it was "love at first sight." By Thanksgiving (only a few weeks after meeting her), he had decided Alice was to be his wife; the following June he proposed. She put T.R. off, however, taking another eight months before saying "yes". It is unknown why she declined Theodore's first offer, but a classmate's fiancé later described him as being, "studious, ambitious, eccentric — not the sort to appeal at first." Theodore then recruited his popular mother and sisters, whom he was very close to, to help court her.
Read more about this topic: Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt
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