 FDR's home on Campobello is the main attraction to more than 130,000 visitors who yearly tour the Roosevelt Campobello Park, established in 1964 as the world's first international park, jointly funded and operated by the United States and Canada.
Encompassing some twenty-six hundred acres, or most of the southern end of the island, the park is open to visitors seven days a week from the end of May until the middle of October.
Most visitors arrive in private cars, but tour buses account for about eight thousand of the tourists, who come from every state in the United States, every province in Canada, and several foreign countries.
Besides Franklin D. Roosevelt's former summer home, the park consists of four other restored cottages from the summer colony era, a visitors' center, and a "natural area," traversed by several hiking trails and two automobile drives.
FDR's Summer Home Is at the Top Center in This Aerial View of the Park
Visitors can stroll casually through the thirty-four-room FDR "cottage," which was built "of that comfortably uncertain architectural style common to another era when people had money, sought room to spread out and eschewed formality (at least for the summer)."
In the visitors' center two beautiful thirty-minute films, shown hourly, depict some of Campobello's history and President Roosevelt's relation to the place he called his "beloved island."
Other than the Roosevelt house and the visitors' center, the only other building regularly open to the public is the restored Hubbard cottage, which can be toured whenever there are no conference groups using its facilities.
Nonprofit, international governmental, educational, scientific, and medical groups regularly use the park's facilities as a meeting place. In the past the New Brunswick Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Development, Justice, and Tourism have held conferences on Campobello Island along with American conference groups from the Maine Medical Center, the University of Maine's Canadian-American Center, and the International Conference of Human Rights and Peace.
 "A lot of people come back every year just to see the spectacular flower gardens," says assistant park superintendent Galen Sheehan, continuing, "They love the way the grounds and cottages are kept and how friendly our personnel are.
Park Superintendent Harry Stevens with His Wife, Judy, Enjoy the View from the Dining Room Window at the Hubbard Cottage
Yet, the average visitor doesn't spend much time at the park. "They run right in from Lubec, see both movies, spend a half hour at the Roosevelt house, and a half hour at the Hubbard house. Everybody's in a hurry. They seem to think they are slowing down on their vacation, but they're not, really. They beam right in here and beam right out again," says Galen. Only about five or ten percent spend any time in the natural area, one of the highlights of the park.
Linnea Calder, the Roosevelt Park's historian consultant, grew up in the Campobello world of the Roosevelts for whom she and her parents worked. She is often available at the visitors' center or the FDR cottage to answer questions posed by curious visitors. Here she relates some of her memories of childhood and later years:
"I'll be seventy-one in May, 1982. The earliest age that I remember going to the FDR house was when I was just small. My father was still alive. He was caretaker there. He died when I was six years old. I have several memories of being there with him. It was before I was six years old that! first went to the house.
"I don't know how long my father was caretaker there. I think it was for a long time. I know he even visited Hyde Park. Also, he helped build the swimming pool, the one that's been filled in down here.
Linnea Calder, Near the Entrance to FDR's Summer Cottage
"My mother probably wasn't working in the house, but she started as laundress. Someone was in the house one time making a fuss over me and one of the guards said, 'I don't see what they're making such a fuss over her for. Her mother was only the laundress.' Franklin Jr. was quite put out when he heard it. He said, 'She was much more than the laundress, before she finished working.' At the time I said, 'Yes, she was laundress and I'm not ashamed of it. She made an honest living.'
"I remember Johnny was quite small. He was either in his nurse's arms or in a carriage and I went over to speak to him, like a child would. My father called me back and said that I shouldn't go over and the nurse said that was all right; to let me come over.
"They had four boys and a girl, except there was a boy who died in infancy. Anna was the oldest. Anna's dead and Johnny's dead; the oldest and the youngest. The other children are Franklin, James and Elliott.
"After working as a laundress, my mother was a house-
keeper, I suppose, would be what you'd call it, starting in 1926. She was the housekeeper for both cottages, Mrs. James (Granny) Roosevelt's and Franklin's. She had to see to the cleaning and opening of them and have supplies in when the family came.
"Granny's cottage was torn down in 1949 or 1950; maybe it took two years to get it all down. Elliott had acquired the property. At least he had power of attorney. He and Mrs. Roosevelt had formed Roosevelt Enterprises. He was in charge of all the properties, I guess. He decided they wouldn't be using two houses. The one house, the Franklin house, would be sufficient for the family if they wanted to come up in the summer. Since the family wasn't coming as much as they used to they wouldn't need two cottages. On account of taxes; on account of the water situation; on account of the closeness of the two cottages and because it needed a lot of repair work done on it, he decided that he would rather have it torn down.
"It is too bad, but James told me that he never understood why Elliott had the house torn down 'til he talked with Elliott and Teddy, my son who tore the house down. James said then he understood the reason for tearing it down and he would have agreed with it.
"I helped clean Granny's house many times. It was similar in style to Franklin's, but smaller. In a way, you could call it a nicer house. It was more compact; more like a home. Whereas the Roosevelt cottage is like a summer home. I liked both of them, but I liked Franklin's house the best, anyway.
"Franklin was given this house when he married Eleanor, a few years after they were married. Granny gave him his house. It was built in 1897 for a family by the name of Kuhn, from Massachusetts. Their name is still on some of the furniture in the
Franklin house. The husband and the son died, and the widow, at her death, stipulated in her will that Mrs. James Roosevelt should have the first refusal on the house if she wanted to buy it. But if she did buy it she wanted her to give it to Franklin. She was very fond of Franklin. Granny Roosevelt bought it. We've never been able to ascertain the exact year, but we think it was something around 1909. She bought it so that his family would have their own summer home. They were married in 1905, March the 17th. She bought it a few years after. They called it a belated wedding gift.
"I think they spent summers at the Granny Roosevelt house [before obtaining their own house]. I really don't remember that much, but I assume they did, or parts of the summer anyway.
"I think it was 1923 or 1924, probably '24 that I started working there. My mother was doing the laundry at that time. I just did light things. Of course I was only twelve years old. In late years I've thought that Mrs. Roosevelt just made a job for me because I realize now that she had plenty of help and all I did was light dusting and empty waste paper baskets. There was a cook, a kitchen maid, another maid, and a butler, I think, besides a nurse. There were four or five on the staff in all.
"I remember Mrs. Roosevelt taking me into the kitchen and telling them, 'This is Linnea,' and what I was going to do and for them to have a glass of milk and a sandwich, or a piece of cake, or some cookies, or some thing for me.
"My mother wasn't in the house at the time. She did the laundry work out at her place. They used the laundry room in the house more for the children's things and for personal laundry.
"In 1921 FDR contracted polio. That was before I started work there. I really haven't any memory of him at Campobello except vaguely. It's one of those things, do I remember or do I just remember from hearing people tell of it, you know, and seeing pictures. I can remember being there with my father and seeing a man who, I presume, was Roosevelt walking around the grounds, or talking with my father.
"I remember having conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt, but not with the president.
"The whole family continued to go up there after 1921 sometimes, and then, as Anna and the two older boys grew older, they grew away from the place. They still would come back occasionally, but they didn't come the way they did previously. Sometimes Mrs. Franklin would come up and bring Johnny and Franklin, but they gradually grew away from the place, too. All of the summer people, the younger generation, did, too. The style of life changed and there wasn't life enough up around here for them.
"They would come usually around the first of July, maybe the end of June, and they would leave in September in time to go back when schools opened. They were there for the whole summer.
"I think Elliott and I are the same age; there's a few months' difference. I don't ever remember talking with or playing with any of the Roosevelt children, but I can remember Elliott, one summer when I was working there. He and I disagree on what summer it was. I remember that he and James had been on a trip out west and he came to Campobello when they came back. The rest of the family was up here. I can remember, he was tall, and blond-headed, very attractive. I helped unpack his suitcase and get his things put away in his bedroom.
"The summer colony kept to itself a great deal. There were the Porters, Archer-Shees, Princes, Hubbards, the two Roosevelt houses, and the Shober house. There were three at Shobers, and two at Hubbards. There was quite a large family at the Prince cottage and the Archer-Shees family was quite large and they were all about the same age as the Roosevelts. Two or three of the Prince grandchildren were here last summer. They came and asked for me and I took them through the cottage and over to Shobers.
"There were two families or three families in Welshpool that were summer colony, too, and they had children, like the Patter-sons and the Steels, from Baltimore, who had some young people. There was a boarding house, too, directly across from the post office in Welshpool and people used to come there to stay.
"The Roosevelts had a lot of bedrooms. They had friends of the children or relatives staying for short times or sometimes they probably came and stayed the summer. I remember that one summer Louis Howe's daughter was up. I remember her distinctly and it's been a long time. They always had someone visiting.
"Then there was the Adams family. Mrs. Adams was the president's cousin and there were two children over there, in those log cabins.
"The Archer-Shee cottage has been torn down; the Porter cottage is in the process of falling down. The Archer-Shee house was a large house; they were a large family from England. I think there were three boys and three girls, and they used to come over to the Roosevelts' a lot.
"Most of the changes on the island have been since the bridge came. There's a great difference in the life-style. People were poorer in those days, before the bridge was built. When Elliott was here in '67 or '68, he said it didn't seem like the same island to him. He said he drove over the island and there were beautiful homes here and each home had at least one car in the door yard. It was just altogether different that way. Although people didn't have much before the bridge, they still owned their own land and their own home.
"After Elliott sold the house to the Hammer brothers in 1952, I continued working for the Hammers. Dr. Hammer said I was a walking encyclopedia on the Roosevelt family. They liked to have me there because if they had visitors who wanted any information I could get it to them, so I worked for them all the while they owned the house. When the two governments took the house over I continued on with them and I've been there all along.
"But, it wasn't continuous because I married and we had a grocery store. We supplied the Roosevelt families with groceries during the summer and my mother was working for them, so I was in contact with them all the time, but I wasn't really working for them until after my husband died and then I worked summers when they were here.
"My mother continued working for them. She continued going to Hyde Park for years. She was Mrs. Roosevelt's housekeeper in her apartment in New York after the president died. I don't know how long she worked. She had to stop because her sister became ill here on the island and she had to come home and stay with her. I think that was some time in the 1950s. When my mother died in 1955, someone who had interviewed her said she had worked for the Roosevelt family forty years.
"She helped close up the house for the Roosevelts. She told me when we were packing things in 1952, 'Linnea, do you realize this is the fifth house I have helped close for the Roosevelt family.' She had helped close the two New York houses, the Hyde Park house, Granny Roosevelt's house here, and she was closing this house.
"I said that my mother was jack-of-all-trades and master of none and I guess that's what I was, too. While Elliott owned the house, from 1947 or '48 until '52 when he sold it, I was caretaker of the house, and I was caretaker for the Hammers for several years. I did everything and anything that needed to be done. When they came they wouldn't have any guests with them or anything. Either my mother or I would be there to take care of them. Sometimes, if they came up to stay for a longer interval, they would bring one of the girls up from Hyde Park, or Mrs. Roosevelt's girl from the Stone cottage. Sometimes I cooked for them.
"I've kept in touch with the family since they stopped coming regularly. I have Christmas cards from some of them, and Franklin always is in contact. I was at Mrs. Roosevelt's funeral and at the ceremonies they had in Lincoln Center for Mrs. Roosevelt in 1962.
"I was often in touch with Johnny while he lived, but with Franklin more than any of them. Johnny used to come while the Hammers had the house. He was friends with them, and he was a guest of theirs many times. The family didn't come back after the house was sold until it became the park. James, Elliott, Franklin, and Johnny were here for a family reunion in 1979, I think it was. Some of the grandchildren were here, too.
"The Hammers didn't change the house very much. Elliott and Johnny had come here before they sold the house and they took a lot of things away, but when the Hammers bought it, they brought most of the things back. If they brought any different furnishings or furniture, it was still Roosevelt items that they had purchased from other Roosevelt homes. They bought a lot of the Roosevelt furniture and artifacts, and the only thing that's been really changed in the house is the curtains and the bedspreads. There is a slightly different arrangement of furniture in some of the rooms. That has been done so the public can view the furniture.
"I don't know of anything that the Hammers kept for sentimental reasons. A lot of things were brought here [from the Hammer Gallery] and turned over with the house, like the presidential flags and the president's chair and different things like that.
"When I started working at the park, at first I was over in the house as a guide. But, still, I was the one who opened the house and closed it. Now I don't do any of that. From 1967 I was in the visitors' center. I was there when the Queen Mother visited, but I also gave her a tour through the house. I was senior receptionist up until a few years ago. I was also the head housekeeper for all the houses, in charge of supplies and seeing that they were ready if anyone came to stay. Now, for three or four years I've been historian consultant. Before, I worked through the winter. Now I'm only on call [in the winter].
"I was at Hyde park one winter in 1926 and '27 with my mother. Until Christmas we stayed in the Stone cottage at Val-Kill and then we went over to the big house. Val-Kill [named after a stream that runs through the property] is a few miles from the big house. I was going to school, but I helped my mother evenings and Saturdays. I was fifteen then. I didn't like Hyde Park. It was too far from Campobello. No water there; no ocean. You can jump across the Hudson.
"I've been back dozens of times. I was there for Granny Roosevelt's funeral and several years ago to the memorial celebration. Franklin had me come up. I was there with the tour from the park two years ago. I've been there a couple of times separate from that, such as when the king and queen were there in '39. Mrs. Roosevelt took me up to be presented to them. The queen shook hands with us, but, of course, the king didn't.
"I could write a book about odd things that have happened at the park. There was a woman who came in one day. She came through the door of the visitors' center and she said, 'How in the name of God did he ever find his way to this God-forsaken hole?' I just stood there and looked at her and said, 'Lady, he must have loved it here because he came each summer and we also love it. We think it's a beautiful island.' She got angry at me.
"Another time, I was over in the house. I went on a coffee break and when I came back there was a man standing in front of the president's bedroom just looking in. I said, 'President Roosevelt occupied that bedroom in 1933.' He just turned and looked at me. I said, 'Really, he did. I worked here and I know.' He said, 'I couldn't care less!' I said, 'Well, I'm sorry. If you feel that way why did you bother to come in?' A lady spoke up from over in the museum end and she said, 'I'll tell you why. Everything that's gone wrong in the last hundred years he blames on Roosevelt.' I said, 'It's plain to be seen, one of you is a Republican and the other is a Democrat.' She laughed, but he didn't.
"In 1933 the secret service chose that downstairs area [where the man mentioned above had been standing] for the president because the museum had been fixed up as a reception room and office and there was a bedroom there that the secret service used as an office. Then, of course, there was that bedroom for him with the porch outside. He could go out without having to go up and down stairs. There was a bathroom right across the hall so the whole unit was sort of self-contained. He wouldn't have to be carried up and down stairs.
"He didn't have a wheel chair here. We didn't have any ramps or anything. They carried him in the litter and, I think, one time they just carried him out in a chair. He was just out on the lawn in front of the front door. I think he was just in one of the wicker chairs.
"I only saw him carried on the litter once I guess. He was here for about three days in 1933. They carried him down to the beach on it and they probably carried him around the grounds on it times when I was working and wasn't watching. They could have used it in '36 to carry him up from the beach. My husband helped carry him up.
"He came back three times: in '33, '36, and '39. I think he was here about three days in '33. In '36 I wasn't working in the house; I think he was just here over night. I was in the house to see him, but I wasn't working. In '39 I believe he came in the morning and left in the afternoon. I saw him, spoke with him, and took groceries up to the house. I think he was just here the one day.
"I had the grocery store and delivered groceries up to the house. I went there in the morning just after he came and the secret service wouldn't let me in then. I said, 'OK, if I go home and get a loaf of bread and come back, will you let me in to deliver the bread?' They let me in. They found out that I could go in."
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