Franklin Roosevelt and Hyde Park: Personal Recollections of Eleanor Roosevelt

The Hudson River Valley was in my husband's blood. Franklin
Delano Roosevelt's family owned land in and around Poughkeepsie
and along the banks of the Hudson River for four generations, but
even before that his Roosevelt ancestors lived just a bit farther down
the Hudson River. His mother's father built a home near New-
burgh, N. Y., and she grew up there; so the river in all of its aspects
and the countryside as a whole were familiar and deeply rooted in
my husband's consciousness.

Franklin Roosevelt was born in the old house at Hyde Park,
which has since been changed somewhat, and modernized. All of
his childhood was spent in the nursery on the third floor, so that
from the windows he overlooked the fields and the woods between
the house and the river.