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used one identified as a Parker Brothers double barrel during his time in the West and was photographed on guard with it when he captured three boat thieves in 1886 (see pages 58-59 of “Theodore Roosevelt: Hunter-Conservationist”).
Kermit came of age while his father was in the White House, and he was a 19 year
old college freshman attending Harvard when Roosevelt left office in 1909. His father indeed took him on a hunting trip, one far grander than Newfoundland or even Yellowstone. He accompanied his father on the famous Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition that year and served as the official photographer of the expedition. T.R.’s book “African Game Trails” about the adventure features many of his photographs and was dedicated “To Kermit Roosevelt My Side-Partner in our ‘Great Adventure’.” During their adventure, a Fox shotgun was used by the Roosevelts for hunting birds for the pot, and other members of the expedition also hunted with shotguns. The big game hunting was naturally done with rifles, and the expedition as a whole collected around 23,151 specimens of a wide variety of African flora and fauna for scientific study. T.R. and Kermit together shot 512 large animals collected across great distances. Since
the African safari required a leave of absence from the university, his father made him promise to study harder upon his return, and he fulfilled his promise and graduated in less than three years. After completing his studies, he went on an even more arduous adventure with his father in South American in the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition exploring the River of Doubt, now known as Rio Roosevelt. During their adventure, the former president was injured and Kermit tended to him. When T.R. asked to be left behind and planned to complete suicide by morphine overdose rather than risk the safety of the rest of the crew, Kermit refused to leave his father and persuaded him to continue on.
T.R.’s health never fully recovered, but he still attempted to serve during World War
I but was rebuffed by President Wilson. However, his sons Theodore Jr., Kermit, Archibald, and Quentin all served, and Kermit was the only one to survive the war without injury. Between the River of Doubt debacle and his military service, Kermit married Belle Wyatt Willard and was the assistant manager at the Buenos Aires branch of First City Bank in 1914-1916. He took command of a British light-armored battery
in Iraq earning the British War Cross for gallantry and then joined the American Expeditionary Force as a captain in the 7th Field Artillery in the 1st Division. His youngest brother Quentin never returned home. He was a pilot in the 95th Aero Squadron’s 1st Pursuit Group and scored one confirmed aerial kill before his Nieuport 28 was shot down behind German lines during a large aerial engagement during
the Second Battle of the Marne. He remains the only son of a U.S. president killed
in combat. The heartache is said to have further led to Theodore Roosevelt’s health decline and then his death in 1919.
When he returned home, Kermit formed the Roosevelt Steamship Company and continued to travel. The larger flask in this set relates to Roosevelt’s 1925 expedition to Central Asia with his brother Theodore Jr. (the James Simpson-Roosevelts Asiatic Expedition) which was sponsored by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The men mentioned on the large flask were friend and business associates of Roosevelt’s. For example, Van Santvoord Merle-Smith, whose name is on the upper right of the flask, was an investment banker at Roosevelt & Son. Merle-Smith also served in World War I and World War II and was Third Assistant Secretary of State in 1920-1921 in the Wilson administration.
Like his father before him, Kermit wrote extensively about his adventures publishing multiple books, including “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” and “Trailing