FDR Announced His Engagement to Eleanor While Visiting Fairhaven

Most folks in Fairhaven probably watch a little football after dinner on Thanksgiving Day, but most folks aren't Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

When the future President of the United States of America found himself in Fairhaven on Thanksgiving 1903, he ate dinner and then announced his engagement to (Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt, his fifth cousin once removed.

The son of James Roosevelt and Sara Ann Delano of Hyde Park, New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born there on January 30, 1882.

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The Delano lineage runs deep in Massachusetts, dating back to the first settlers. The Fairhaven Office of Tourism says, "Jonathan Delano, born 1647, settled in Dartmouth, on the east side of the Nasketucket River in what's now East Fairhaven sometime before the King Philip War."

The Delano family planted deep roots in the area.

The Tourism Office website says FDR first visited family in Fairhaven in the summer of 1882. It would be the first of many visits.

The site says, "Notably, it was here in 1903, following Thanksgiving dinner, that Franklin announced to his mother that he had become engaged to (Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt."

The Roosevelts were married in 1905 and had two children.

Roosevelt, who also spent much time in New Bedford as a young man, was the longest-serving president from 1933 to 1945.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's final visit to Fairhaven was on October 21, 1936, when according to the Fairhaven Office of Tourism, "The couple dined with the president's mother Sara, who had arrived in town the night before."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, at the Little White House Historic Site in Georgia. He was 63.

Eleanor Roosevelt died on November 7, 1962, in New York. She was 78.