Bulloch Hall

Bulloch Hall is a Greek Revivalmansion in Roswell, Georgia, built in 1839. It is one of several historically significant buildings in the city and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This is where Martha Bulloch Roosevelt ("Mittie"), mother of Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. president, lived as a child. It is also where she married Theodore Roosevelt's father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. The descendants of Theodore Roosevelt and his three siblings - Anna, Elliott, and Corinne are therefore descendants of Archibald Bulloch, the first governor of Georgia (1730–1777).

The antebellummansion was built by Mittie's father, Major James Stephens Bulloch. He was a prominent planter from the Georgia coast, who was invited to the new settlement by his friend Roswell King. After the death of his first wife Hester Amarintha "Hettie" Elliott - mother of his son James D. Bulloch - Bulloch married the widow of his first wife's father, Martha "Patsy" Stewart Elliot, and had four more children:

• Anna Bulloch
• Martha Bulloch
• Charles Bulloch (who died young)
• Irvine Bulloch.

Major Bulloch selected a ten-acre plot of land and engaged builder and architect, Willis Ball, to design and construct an elegant Greek Revival home.^[2] The Bulloch family lived in an abandoned Cherokee farmhouse while slaves and trained laborers built the house. In 1839, Major Bulloch and his family moved into the completed house.

Soon Bulloch also owned land for cotton production and held enslaved African-Americans to work his fields. According to the 1850 Slave Schedules [1], Martha Stewart Elliott Bulloch, by then widowed a second time, owned 31 enslaved African-Americans. They mostly labored on cotton and crop production; but some would have worked in the home, on cooking and domestic tasks to support the family. Some of the known slaves who worked in the house were "Maum" Rose (cook), "Maum" Charlotte (housekeeper), "Maum" Grace (nursemaid), "Daddy" William, "Daddy" Luke, and Henry.

In 1835 while living in Hartford, Connecticut, James' wife gave birth to a daughter, also named Martha. She was known affectionately as Mittie. Mittie was raised at Bulloch Hall.

Aunque la fecha de su primer encuentro no está clara, sabemos que cuando Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. tenía 19 años, llegó a Roswell, Georgia, con su amigo Hilborne West, quien se casaría con la hermanastra mayor de Mittie, Susan Elliott. Mittie tenía 15 años en ese momento. "Thee", como lo llamaban, se reencontró con Mittie cuando ella fue a Filadelfia en enero de 1853 para quedarse con su hermana Susan. Se enamoraron y comenzaron a planear su boda mediante cartas entre Mittie en Roswell y Thee en Nueva York. Se casaron en el comedor de Bulloch Hall el 22 de diciembre de 1853. La boda fue un evento fastuoso con invitados que viajaron desde muy lejos y se quedaron durante una semana. La amiga y dama de honor de Mittie, la Sra. William Baker, dejó un recuerdo de la boda en una entrevista realizada por Margaret "Peggy" Mitchell, famosa por Lo que el viento se llevó , en el Atlanta Journal , el 10 de junio de 1923.

Tras la boda, la pareja se mudó a la ciudad de Nueva York . Vivieron con los padres de Thee mientras se construía una casa, regalo de bodas de ellos, en el número 28 de la calle 20 Este. En 1856, Martha, Anna e Irvine se mudaron a Filadelfia para vivir con la hija de Martha, Susan West. Más tarde, Anna y Martha se mudaron con Mittie y Thee a Nueva York. Los Roosevelt tuvieron tres hijos: Anna , Theodore Roosevelt (el 26.º presidente de los Estados Unidos ), Elliott y Corinne . Posteriormente, Elliott se casó con Anna Rebecca Hall, y su hija fue la primera dama de los Estados Unidos , Eleanor Roosevelt .

Theodore Roosevelt, who had begun his presidency on reasonably good terms for a half-northerner president, had infuriated the South by inviting Booker T. Washington to dine in the White House. Consequently, he waited a few years until the episode blew over and finally visited Bulloch Hall for the first time while touring the South in 1905. He was thought to be the first sitting President of the United States to visit the South since the end of the American Civil War, however this is incorrect as William McKinley had visited the South earlier while celebrating the victory of the Spanish–American War.

President Roosevelt and his wife Edith arrived in Roswell, Georgia on October 20, 1905. At Bulloch Hall, he spoke as follows:

It has been my very great good fortune to have the right to claim my blood is half Southern and half Northern, and I would deny the right of any man here to feel a greater pride in the deeds of every Southerner than I feel. Of all the children, the brothers and sisters of my mother who were born and brought up in that house on the hill there, my two uncles afterward entered the Confederate service and served with the Confederate Navy.

One, the younger man, served on the Alabama as the youngest officer aboard her. He was captain of one of her broadside 32-pounders in her final fight, and when at the very end the Alabama was sinking and the Kearsarge passed under her stern and came up along the side that had not been engaged hitherto, my uncle, Irvine Bulloch, shifted his gun from one side to the other and fired the two last shots fired from the Alabama. James Dunwoody Bulloch was an admiral in the Confederate service. ...

Men and women, don't you think I have the ancestral right to claim a proud kinship with those who showed their devotion to duty as they saw the duty, whether they wore the grey or whether they wore the blue? All Americans who are worthy the name feel an equal pride in the valor of those who fought on one side or the other, provided only that each did with all his strength and soul and mind his duty as it was given to him to see his duty."^[3]

Eleanor Roosevelt visited Roswell and Bulloch Hall several times. Her husband Franklin Roosevelt visited the house, but did not leave his car.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places individually,^[4] and also as a contributing building in the Roswell Historic District.

• Summer, Edward. The Legend of Teddy Bear Bob aka Bear Bob's Story
• In 1974, director Monte Hellman used Bulloch Hall to film several scenes from the movie Cockfighter, starring Warren Oates.^[5]
• Bulloch Hall served as the model for the cover illustration of William Harben's novel Mam' Linda.^[6]

• Roosevelt, Theodore. An Autobiography. (1913)
• Harbaugh, William Henry. The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. (1963)
• Huddleston, Connie M. and Gwendolyn I. Koehler. "Mittie & Thee: An 1853 Roosevelt Romance." (nonfiction) (2015)
• Koehler, Gwendolyn I. and Connie M. Huddleston. "Between the Wedding & the War: The Bulloch/Roosevelt Letters 1854-1860) (2016)
• Morris, EdmundThe Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979)
• Morris, Edmund Theodore Rex. (2001)
• Mowry, George. The era of Theodore Roosevelt and the birth of modern America, 1900-1912. (1954)
• McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (2001)
• National Register Information System

• Bulloch Hall official website
• Bulloch Hall historical marker