Martha Bulloch Roosevelt
Martha Bulloch Roosevelt
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Martha Bulloch Roosevelt

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Martha Bulloch Roosevelt

Martha Stewart "Mittie" Roosevelt (née Bulloch; July 8, 1835 – February 14, 1884) was an American socialite. She was the mother of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and the paternal grandmother of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a great-granddaughter of Archibald Bulloch, grandniece of William Bellinger Bulloch, and granddaughter of General Daniel Stewart. A true Southern belle raised in Georgia, Roosevelt is thought to have been one of the inspirations for Scarlett O'Hara.

Mittie was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 8, 1835, to Georgia residents Major James Stephens Bulloch (1793–1849) and Martha "Patsy" Stewart (1799–1864). She had an elder sister, Anna Louisa Bulloch (1833–1893), and two younger brothers, Charles Irvine Bulloch (1838–1841) and Civil War Confederate veteran Irvine Stephens Bulloch (1842–1898).

Through her father's first marriage to Hester Amarintha "Hettie" Elliott (1797–1831), she had two elder half brothers:

Through her mother's first marriage to Senator John Elliott (father of Hettie), she also had four elder half siblings:

When Mittie was three, Major Bulloch moved the family from Savannah, Georgia, to Cobb County in north Georgia and the new village that would become Roswell. It lies just north of the Chattahoochee River and the city of Atlanta, and Major Bulloch had gone there to become a partner in a new cotton mill with Roswell King, the town's founder. Bulloch had a mansion built, and, soon after it was completed in 1839, the family moved into Bulloch Hall. As a significant antebellum structure, it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Bullochs were a wealthy planter family, members of the Georgia elite. In 1850, they held 31 African-American slaves, most of whom worked in their cotton fields. Others were assigned to such domestic tasks as cooking, sewing and related work. Recent research in Bulloch records identified 33 enslaved black people who were owned by the family. They have been commemorated on a plaque on the mansion grounds.

Like all of her siblings, Mittie was assigned an enslaved child - Lavinia - to act as her personal "shadow". Lavinia acted as Mittie's companion and went everywhere with her; stopping outside the classroom when Mittie went inside and sleeping on a mat by her side at night.

Mittie was a student at the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute in Columbia, South Carolina.

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