(ROOSEVELT FRANKLIN D) Hotel register with Roosevelts check

Sale 2391 - Lot 309

Price Realized: $ 438

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

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN D.) Hotel register with Roosevelt's check-in signature on the day of the Lusitania sinking. 152 pages of guest signatures for the Riverside Hotel on printed sheets, interspersed with advertising leaves. Folio, contemporary 1/2 calf, worn and slightly warped; moderate dampstaining. Eastport, ME, 29 April to 17 August 1915

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

On 7 May, the future president was the final guest of the day, signed the registering on his family's behalf as "Mr. & Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Washington." He was serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time. The family took two rooms, presumably to accommodate their four children and any household staff who accompanied them on the journey. The hotel was in Eastport in the eastern tip of Maine; the family was likely en route to their summer retreat at Campobello Island, Canada, a short ferry ride away. The RMS Lusitania had been torpedoed at 2:10 that afternoon, probably before Roosevelt signed in, though the news may not have reached remote Eastport by then. The news would have been of direct professional interest to Roosevelt; he would soon agitate to use the attack as a reason to declare war on Germany.