Bamie Roosevelt

When her niece Eleanor Roosevelt campaigned against Eleanor's first cousin and Bamie's nephew Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., she publicly broke with her niece after the ordeal. In a letter to her son, Bamie wrote of Eleanor:

Bamie's niece and TR's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, also broke with Eleanor over this highly distasteful (to Theodore's family) political activity that included Eleanor riding up to Ted, Jr's speaking engagements with a teapot on her car to remind voters of Ted's supposed (but later disproved) connections to the Teapot Dome Scandal. Eleanor dismissed Bamie's criticisms by referring to her as an "aged woman." Despite all these intra-family discords, long after Bamie's death, Alice and Eleanor would later reconcile after Eleanor wrote Alice a comforting letter upon the death of Alice's daughter, Paulina Longworth.

Bamie and her niece, Eleanor Roosevelt, eventually reconciled, and in an article in the Ladies Home Journal, "How to Take Criticism," Eleanor referred to her aunt Bamie, saying, "I can honestly say that I hate no one, and perhaps the best advice I can give to anyone who suffers from criticism and yet must be in the public eye, would be contained in the words of my aunt, Mrs. William Sheffield Cowles. She was President Theodore Roosevelt's sister and the aunt to whom many of the young people in the family went for advice. I had asked her whether I should do something which at that time would have caused a great deal of criticism, and her answer was: "Do not be bothered by what people say as long as you are sure that you are doing what seems right to you, but be sure that you face yourself honestly." Read Less