Boston’s Emmanuel Church was where Archie Roosevelt married Grace Lockwood one hundred years ago today.

Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt married Grace Stackpole Lockwood one hundred years ago today at Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Newbury Street in Boston. It was a quick betrothal for Archie and Grace; he proposed on April 6, not coincidentally the day Congress declared war on Germany. Theirs was just one of literally thousands of such engagements that April; in the two weeks after the declaration of war there were over 6,200 marriage licenses issued in the five boroughs of New York City alone. Many of these young newlywed men were hoping for deferments, which as it turned out were not forthcoming; the War Department would announce on April 19 that married men of draft age would not be exempt from conscription, should it indeed come to pass.

His mother and father, Edith and Theodore Roosevelt, stayed at the Hotel Victoria (the larger building). Most of Archie’s siblings and spouses too stayed the Victoria.

A deferment was not the objective for Archie Roosevelt. Like his three brothers, he was eager to join the Allied fight. Even their father Theodore Roosevelt, as we have been discussing the past few days, was hoping to join the Allied fight. It is interesting that he married a Boston girl. Presumably he met her while a students at Harvard, which is how his father met his first wife in the 1870s. Theodore, Edith and other family had taken the train from New York the evening before and ensconced themselves in a group of suites at the Hotel Victoria. The Colonel was still waiting on Wilson’s decision regrading his division.

Archie was Theodore’s third son and in some ways the most troubled. He had been expelled from Groton while a teenager. In April 1916 he was almost expelled from Harvard itself in a curious incident involving an unpaid $5 lab fee that with fines came to $15 before the thing was resolved. Reading between the lines, one can only speculate if there was more to the threatened Harvard expulsion than became publicly known. In October 1916 he had a speeding incident in Long Island in which he led a policeman on a minor police chase before pulling over and accepting his ticket and a court appointment to explain himself.. With the war on now however, all these things were in the past. Archie Roosevelt and Grace Lockwood’s wedding took place at noon. It seems to have been a quiet affair with just the immediate families in attendance. Quentin Roosevelt was the best man.

(images/Boston Public Library)