He was a voracious reader and writer his childhood diaries reveal much about his interests and the quality of his expanding mind. From an early age he never lacked energy or the will to improve himself physically and mentally. He took boxing lessons to defend himself and to test his competitive spirit. To strengthen his constitution, he lifted dumbbells and exercised in a room of the house converted into a gymnasium. Far worse, however, were the life threatening attacks of asthma he had to endure until early adulthood. He was a sickly, underweight child, hindered by poor eyesight. Unfortunately the affluence to which the young Theodore grew accustomed could do little to improve the state of his fragile health. Together the parents instilled in their eldest son a strong sense of family loyalty and civic duty, values that Roosevelt would himself practice, and would preach from the bully pulpit all of his adult life. His mother, Martha Bulloch, was reputedly one of the loveliest girls to have been born in antebellum Georgia.

His father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., was a prosperous glassware merchant, and was one of the wealthy old Knickerbocker class, whose Dutch ancestors had been living on Manhattan Island since the 1640s. A re-creation of the original dwelling, now operated by the National Park Service, replicates the tranquility of Roosevelt's earliest years. Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, in a brownstone house on Twentieth Street in New York City. Theodore Roosevelt: Icon of the American Century

Theodore roosevelt sr