In his "Autobiography" he tells us that "about 1644 his ancestor,
Claes Martensen van Roosevelt, came to New Amsterdam as a
'settler'--the euphemistic name for an immigrant who came over in
the steerage of a sailing ship in the seventeenth century. From
that time for the next seven generations from father to son every
one of us was born on Manhattan Island." * For over a hundred
years the Roosevelts continued to be typical Dutch burghers in a
hard-working, God-fearing, stolid Dutch way, each leaving to his
son a little more than he had inherited. During the Revolution,
some of the family were in the Continental Army, but they won no
high honors, and some of them sat in the Congresses of that
generation--sat, and were honest, but did not shine. Theodore's
great-grandfather seems to have amassed what was regarded in
those days as a large fortune.
* Autobiography, 1.
His grandfather, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, a glass
importer and banker, added to his inheritance, but was more than
a mere money-maker.
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