ABSTRACT
On August 6, 1861, Edith Kermit Carow was born to Gertrude Tyler Carow and Charles Carow. Edith was the first daughter and the first living child of the wealthy Carow family. Edith and her younger sister, Emily, should have had an idyllic childhood, and in some respects they did-their pedigree and their money insulated them from most trials. Several misfortunes, nevertheless, marred their young lives. Charles Carow, Knickerbocker scion of the New York City-based international shipping family, was a gambler and an alcoholic whose failed business precipitated a family life that Edith would later seek to forget. Gertrude Tyler Carow, in the face of the strain, retreated to hypochrondia and became a distant and selfish mother, preoccupied with her husband and their mounting troubles. Edith seldom spoke of her parents in later years, and she did not regale her children with stories of their grandparents. By nature, Edith was a loner who often preferred books to people. Her acquaintances labeled her haughty and imperious. She guarded her privacy-so much so that in later life she burned many of her letters and left few traces of the pain of her early life. Thus her youth is difficult to reconstruct-except in reference to her childhood companion and future husband, Theodore Roosevelt.
