Early life

Alice Lee Roosevelt was born on February 12, 1884 in New York City. She was the only child of Theodore Roosevelt's first marriage with Alice Hathaway Lee. Two days after her birth, her mother died of kidney failure and Alice was sent to live with her aunt Bye for two years. In 1889, her father remarried and Alice went to live with him and her new step mother, Edith Roosevelt. Alice would have 5 step siblings. Throughout much of her childhood she felt neglected and alone, competing with her step mother’s children for her father's love and attention.

Even as a child, Roosevelt was very rebellious and consistently defied her stepmother in order to gain her father’s attention. She felt out of place among her half brothers and sisters. As William Mann described it in his book, The War of the Roosevelts, “Alice was a coiled snake, keenly aware that she was came from a different mother than her brothers’.” (p 52). Among her acts, she consistently broke curfew and when her frustrated parents threatened to send her away to school she responded "If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will."