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His early life experiences influenced his later accomplishments. Born on October 27, 1858 (Morris

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His early life experiences influenced his later accomplishments. Born on October 27, 1858 (Morris 33), Theodore Roosevelt was the son of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., a successful businessman and philanthropist, and Martha “Mittie” Bulloch Roosevelt, the daughter of a wealthy Georgia plantation family. Theodore Roosevelt was the second of four children born into the prominent Dutch and English family (“Roosevelt, Theodore”). At an early age, Roosevelt earned the nickname “Teedie” (Morris 34) and suffered from asthma, coughs, colds, fevers, and nausea (40). Physical fitness, an important trait to the Roosevelts, was encouraged to help overcome his illnesses; furthermore, Roosevelt’s father said he must “make his body” (60). In order to meet his …show more content…

Taken back by the tragedies, Roosevelt traveled to North Dakota to experience the West before it was gone and arrived on September 8, 1883. Immediately, Roosevelt fell in love with the badlands region and invested eighty-five thousand dollars into the Maltese Cross and Elkhorn ranches in which he was a partner and owner respectively. While in North Dakota, Roosevelt hunted buffalo, rounded up cattle, halted stampedes, and instituted the region’s first stockmen’s association. After the winter of 1886-87 destroyed virtually all of TR’s cattle and ranch holdings, he returned to New York (“Theodore Roosevelt in North Dakota”).
When Roosevelt returned East, he married Edith Kermit Carrow, a teenage acquaintance, in London on December 2, 1886. During their marriage Edith raised TR’s first child, Alice, and had five more of her own: Theodore, Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin (“Roosevelt, Edith”). Hired by Benjamin Harrison as Civil Service Commissioner in 1889 (“Theodore Roosevelt”), Roosevelt spent six years at the job and prosecuted corrupt officials across the nation (Brinkley 226).
Flowing with energy and relishing the position, Roosevelt became the president of the New York Police Department Board in 1895. The corrupt and untrustworthy police force offered many problems to Roosevelt; however,

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