Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884, in New York City, into a family of wealth and sorrow. Her mother, a celebrated beauty, made Eleanor feel plain and inadequate; her father, Elliott Roosevelt, was charming and alcoholic, and she adored him even as his addiction destroyed him. Her mother died of diphtheria when Eleanor was eight; her father died two years later. She was raised by a stern grandmother, found her first real happiness at a boarding school in England, and returned to New York to enter society as a shy, serious young woman more interested in settlement house work than debutante balls. At twenty, she married her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They had six children, five of whom survived. In 1918, Eleanor discovered that Franklin was having an affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer.