Theodore roosevelt party leader

Theodore Roosevelt’s Early Life and Career

Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, to Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, a wealthy family in New York City.

Known as “Teedie”–later “Teddy”–he was frail and sickly as a boy, and as a teenager followed a program of gymnastics and weightlifting to build up his strength. Upon graduating from Harvard College in 1880, Roosevelt married Alice Hathaway Lee and entered Columbia University Law School, though he dropped out after only one year to enter public service.

He was elected to the New York State Assembly at the age of 23 and served two terms (1882-84). 

Both his wife and mother died on the same day in 1884, and the grieving Roosevelt spent the next two years on a ranch he owned in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory, where he hunted big game, drove cattle and worked as a frontier sheriff.

Upon returning to New York, he married his childhood sweetheart, Edith Ker