(PRESIDENTS) Invitation to the wedding reception of Eleanor

Sale 2600 - Lot 198

Price Realized: $ 1,750

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500

(PRESIDENTS.) Invitation to the wedding reception of Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. Printed invitation, 6 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches, completed in manuscript to invitee "Miss Livingston," plus integral blank leaf; horizontal mailing fold, minimal wear, tipped to mat. Framed with 3 photographs; not examined out of frame. [New York], 17 March [1905]

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Eleanor Roosevelt's 1905 wedding to fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt was widely reported in the society pages, as she was the favorite niece of sitting president Theodore Roosevelt. She had been orphaned at the age of 9 and raised in part by her grandmother Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall, who issued this wedding invitation: "Mrs. Valentine G. Hall requests the pleasure of Miss Livingston's company at the wedding reception of her granddaughter Anna Eleanor Roosevelt and Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . at Eight East Seventy-sixth Street." President Roosevelt not only attended the wedding, but gave his niece away.

Provenance: collection of Donald Scott Carmichael (1912-2008), who authored "Franklin Roosevelt and Me: Brief Encounters in the Thirties," and was a leading collector of Roosevelt memorabilia. With his bookplate on verso of frame, along with his 1998 typed note explaining that "the photos of the bride and groom were taken in 1907 when their first child Anna was born; the photo of Grandmother Hall's is dated 1894. In 70 years of collecting FDR, this is the first time I have seen this invitation--except for the one at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library."