Post Cards From The Heart – Mr. Roosevelt Wasn’t Home

       Friday, Sep.27 – 1907   Viewed city from Monument

Bessie and Luke left the Jamestown Exposition and continued their honeymoon with a visit to Washinton, D.C.   The Washington Monument was a must stop for them as they got their bearings inside the city and planned their stay.   Where to go first?   So much to see and do in the nation’s capitol and only three days for sightseeing!   The answer is the same as it is for many of us who travel to D.C. a century later, whether honeymooning or not.   The White House.   The iconic symbol of America’s pride in itself.

Visited Fri Sep 27 – 1907.  The home of Teddie – he was not there.

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States and held that office from 1901 – 1909.   He was famous for his Rough Riders in the Spanish American War of 1898 but in 1906 received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to negotiaite the Russo-Japanese Treaty.   War and Peace.  Two of the thorniest obsessions of American Presidents, and Teddy Roosevelt was no exception.   So in 1907 when our friends Luke and Bessie came to call,  he would have been the inhabitant of The White House as they stood in line to get their tickets for a tour of his home.  Alas, as she wrote jokingly on her post card, Teddy was not there. Bessie was so excited to go through the historical residence she bought a post card for each change of rooms and wrote the time for every half hour of the tour.

Blue Room, White House, Washington, D. C.

Ten a.m. Sept 27th  1907. L and B

State Dining Room

10:30 a.m. Sept 27th 1907

Luke, Bessie

Red Room

Eleven a.m. Sept 27th 1907

Executive Mansion, East Room

Eleven thirty a.m., Sept 27th 1907

East Room

12 p.m. Sept 27th 1907

The tour lasted two hours and was unforgettable for the young couple who were completely taken in by the guide’s descriptions and stories that came with the house.   If these walls could talk.

The day was half over and Luke suggested they walk past a couple of other buildings he wanted to see on the way back to their hotel for a late lunch and afternoon delight.   It was a honeymoon, after all.

State War and Navy Departments, Washington, D.C. 

Fri Sept. 27, 1907

Agricultural Building 

Fri Sept 27 1907

Naturally he wanted to see the military and agriculture  buildings on the very first day of their visit, and Bessie went along with him.  She purchased the post cards for their memory book which she faithfully kept as a reminder of each day’s adventures.   It was a world without digital cameras, a world without cameras unless you were a professional photographer, so the post cards were Bessie’s attempt to preserve their reminiscences.

Let’s leave our Alabama couple to themselves on this Friday night in the Big City and wish them well until we meet them in the morning.