Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

Anyone for Tennis?

For the next two weeks, the FDR Library will be celebrating tennis history in honor of the President’s first cousins, Ellen and Grace Roosevelt, pictured here (Ellen, left, and Grace, right).

Ellen won the 1890 singles title and shared the doubles championship that year with her sister Grace. Ellen paired with Clarence Hobart in 1893 to take the mixed doubles title. Hobart found romance with another mixed doubles partner and won the championship with his wife Augusta Schultz in 1905.

Ellen and her sister Grace were fierce competitors, belying the notion that early women’s tennis was merely a genteel past-time for elegant ladies. They actively competed in championships both at tennis clubs in the Hudson Valley (where they resided not far from Springwood, FDR’s birthplace and home) and in tennis centers like Newport and Narragansett, Rhode Island (photo: at play in Narragansett, Rhode Island).

Photos of Ellen and Grace donated by their family after Ellen’s death in 1954 document the early history of the game in the United States. These images include Ellen and Grace in formal portraits as well as in match play. Some images may have been taken by Ellen or Grace or by their father John Aspinwall Roosevelt, FDR’s uncle.

Many have never been seen by a wide audience and may be the only photos of early US championship tennis.

The men’s match shown in this photograph is one of several in our collection documenting the 1887 men’s championships between Richard D. Sears and Henry Slocum on August 30, 1887 at the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island. These may be the only extant photographs of the match in play. Sears defeated Slocum in straight sets (6-1, 6-3, 6-2). Sears won the first seven US National Championships, all contested on grass, in Newport.