Stacy Cordery

MONMOUTH, Ill. — Earlier this month, Monmouth College history department chair Stacy Cordery was the featured speaker in the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site lecture series.

The series sponsors special lecture programs on the subject of Theodore Roosevelt, local history and the Victorian era and, in addition, Cordery’s March 7 talk was part of the celebration of Women’s History Month.

Located in Buffalo, N.Y., the national historic site preserves the former Ansley Wilcox home, where Roosevelt was inaugurated on Sept. 14, 1901, as the nation’s 26th president following the assassination of President William McKinley.

The title of Cordery’s talk, “The Other Washington Monument: Alice Roosevelt Longworth,” is the same as her nearly-finished biography of Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter.

“I claim that she was the first celebrity in American history, going on Daniel Boorstin’s definition of ‘celebrity,’” said Cordery, who elaborated, “She was the first person to be known for her well-knownness … Mothers named their daughter Alice, and crowds of thousands of people followed her wherever she went.”

When it came time to write her graduate history dissertation at the University of Texas, Cordery turned to Alice instead of her other favorites, Eleanor Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, because much less had been written on the former First Daughter.

“I have documents on Alice from her granddaughter that no other historian has ever seen,” said Cordery, who titled her dissertation, “Alice Roosevelt Longworth: Life in a Public Crucible.” Because of the unprecedented access she has been given to private family papers, Cordery was able to illustrate her talk in Buffalo with rarely-seen photographs.

Cordery has also authored a college textbook on Alice Roosevelt’s father. Written as part of the “Creators of the American Mind” series, its title is “Theodore Roosevelt: In the Vanguard of the Modern.”

Released by the Office of College Communications
Barry McNamara, Associate Director of College Communications
Phone: 309-457-2117
Fax: 309-457-2330