Lecture: An American Wedding

AN AMERICAN WEDDING: Like any presidential visit to New York City, this one produced excitement, large crowds, cheering, congested traffic and many disruptions. Because it fell on St. Patrick’s Day, and because the president had a very full schedule involving multiple movements across the city, the logistics were complicated. The president was Theodore Roosevelt who, with his wife Edith and their daughter Ethel, had come to New York on March 17, 1905, for a family occasion. At 3:30 p.m., President Roosevelt escorted his only niece — the orphaned daughter of his brother — down the aisle at her wedding. The bride, Eleanor Roosevelt, 20, married her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 23, a first year law student at Columbia University. However, the star of the day was, by all accounts, Eleanor’s uncle Teddy. Join Port resident John Q. Barrett, professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law, for a slide-illustrated discussion of this momentous occasion. Refreshments will be served courtesy of Friends of the Library.