In February 1904, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt thanked Irish activist Michael Davitt for the gift of “two blackthorns, which, at the beginning of a Presidential year, I shall accept as good omens.”1 Nine months later, Roosevelt won re-election.
Halfway through that second term, the American president wrote to Davitt’s American-born wife, the former Mary Yore of St. Joseph, Michigan, to express condolences about his death two days earlier in Dublin.
Theodore Roosevelt
“It was my good fortune to number among my friends your late husband, Mr. Michael Davitt,” Roosevelt wrote.2 “I valued his, and I beg that you will accept my most sincere sympathy in your great bereavement.”
Both letters are part of the massive Theodore Roosevelt Collection, released online 17 October by the Library of Congress. The digital collection contains about 276,000 documents, including letters, speeches, executive orders, scrapbooks, diaries, White House reception records and press releases of his administration, as well as family records, and about 461,000 images.
Michael Davitt
Roosevelt’s 1904 thank you note to Davitt is mentioned in Laurence Marley’s 2007 biography of the County Mayo native.3 The author cites the Papers of Michael Davitt Collection at Trinity College Dublin, which is not fully digitized. Marley also noted Roosevelt’s 1906 letter Davitt’s widow.4 His source for this is an 8 June Reuter’s dispatch from Boston published in the Freemans Journal.
A day earlier, The New York Times reported that Roosevelt declined an invitation by the United Irish League to attend a memorial service for Davitt in Boston.5 The Times reprinted a 4 June letter from Roosevelt that said, “Mr. Davitt was a personal friend of mine, and I sincerely regret his loss. I have written to Mrs. Davitt to express my sympathy.”
These examples illustrate how the digitized Roosevelt papers, part of the ever-expanding universe of similar online collections, is widening historical research opportunities. I’m fortunate to have done in-person research at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and at Trinity College Dublin, where I reviewed a one-year portion of the Davitt collection for my Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited series. (See posts 15 & 16.) But not everyone has the chance to make such onsite visits.
The Roosevelt collection contains other Ireland-related letters and documents. These include correspondence from:
- Irish Folk Song Society, 1910
- Irish Gaelic League, 1913
- Irish National Foresters, 1910
- Irish Protestant Benevolent Society, 1911
- Irish Unionist Alliance, 1918
- United Irish-American Society, 1911
I’m sure there is much, much more. I still getting familiar with the collection, as you should, too.
Davitt’s grave, Straide, County Mayo, February 2018.
- Theodore Roosevelt Papers: Series 2: Letterpress Copybooks, 1897-1916; Vol. 45, 1904, Jan. 13-Feb. 25, Image 410.
- Theodore Roosevelt Papers: Series 2: Letterpress Copybooks, 1897-1916; Vol. 64, 1906, May 15-June 8, Image 225.
- Michael Davitt: Freelance Radical and Frondeu, Four Courts Press, Dublin, p. 260.
- Ibid., p. 286
- The New York Times, June 7, 1906, p. 1.