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On this day in New York · January 30, 1882

FDR Is Born at Hyde Park

The baby born in a Hudson Valley mansion this morning would grow up to run New York from the governor's office, then run the country for longer than the Constitution now allows anyone to.

FDR Is Born at Hyde Park
Wikimedia Commons / Franklin D. Roosevelt

The facts

Born
January 30, 1882, at Hyde Park, New York
Parents
James Roosevelt and Sara Delano Roosevelt
Governor of New York
Elected 1928, succeeding Al Smith; re-elected 1930
Presidential terms
Elected 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944, the only president to serve more than two terms

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, at Springwood, his family's estate in Hyde Park, roughly eighty miles up the Hudson from the city. His parents, James Roosevelt and Sara Delano Roosevelt, gave him a childhood of private tutors and old money, not exactly a preview of the coalition he would later build. He entered politics in 1910, elected to the New York State Senate as a Democrat in a district that usually voted the other way, then served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Wilson. In 1928 he succeeded his mentor Al Smith as governor of New York, and four years after that he was president, elected in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944.

In their words

The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.

  1. Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on January 30, 1882.

    FDR Presidential Library and Museum biography

    Source: FDR Presidential Library and Museum

  2. He thus became the only American president to serve more than two terms.

    FDR Presidential Library and Museum biography

    Source: FDR Presidential Library and Museum

Why it still matters

Roosevelt's four elected terms are exactly why no one else will ever get four: Congress passed the 22nd Amendment in 1947 to cap the presidency at two terms, and it was ratified in 1951, a direct response to the run that started with the kid born in Hyde Park today.

Sources

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