The Chronicles Of Grant County
Franklin Roosevelt Visited Grant County
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt are seen to the right in this photograph as they visited Grant County in May of 1912. Mrs. Tilden Selmes and her daughter, Isabella Selmes Ferguson, are seen to the left in the photograph. Robert Ferguson, husband of Isabella Selmes Ferguson, evidently took this photo. (The photograph was provided courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library of The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 1912.)
Years before he became President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Grant County on at least two separate occasions. According to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library of The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Franklin and his wife, Eleanor, visited the Ferguson family in the Burro Mountains in 1912; news articles indicated a second visit took place in 1914.
In her autobiography, This Is My Story, Eleanor Roosevelt spoke of one of her visits to Silver City with Isabella Ferguson: "As we wandered down the Silver City streets, I saw my first cowboy...Instead of reading of it in a book, I was seeing it and I was thrilled."
On April 9, 1914, Mr. Roosevelt, then the Assistant Secretary of the U S Navy, was the guest of honor at a banquet at the Harvey House in Deming, according to a news article published the next day in The Deming Graphic. This news article noted that Secretary and Mrs. Roosevelt had arrived three days earlier and were staying with the Ferguson family in Grant County.
"After the banquet, Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt got aboard the Southern Pacific train for the Pacific coast, where Mr. Roosevelt will inspect the several naval stations and harbors from San Diego to Puget Sound," stated The Deming Graphic in this news article. The newspaper made reference that Mr. Roosevelt stated that two of the three new battleships then being considered by the U S Congress would likely bear the names of "Arizona" and "New Mexico."
Several years later, on September 20, 1918, it was reported in the Albuquerque Morning Journal that Franklin Roosevelt – still serving as the Assistant Secretary of the U S Navy – was "…at the home of his mother here [in the City of New York] suffering an attack of pneumonia which developed…[during the Pandemic of 1918-1919] while on his voyage home from his recent visit to France and England. The illness is not serious, it was stated."
Further information about Isabella Selmes Ferguson will be detailed in a future edition of The Chronicles Of Grant County. She was a leader in New Mexico and later became the first woman elected to the U S Congress from the State of Arizona. It was in the 1930s when she represented that entire state.
Eleanor Roosevelt took this photograph of Mrs. Tilden Selmes, the mother of Isabella Selmes Ferguson; Isabella Selmes Ferguson; Robert Ferguson; and her husband, Franklin Roosevelt, while they visited Grant County in May of 1912. (The photograph was provided courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library of The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 1912.)
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