Franklin D. Roosevelt Inventories His Stamp Collection

Manuscript Document. Hand-Written Inventory of His Collection of Haitian and Hong Kong Stamp Collection. 1927. Bound in purple silk ribbon. 72 pp., 8 1/2 x 13 in. "I can almost say that I owe my life to my hobbies, especially stamp collecting."This extensive portion of Roosevelt's inventory of his stamp collection, created in 1927, includes pages of chronological lists of stamps from Haiti and Hong Kong. The first 68 pages list his collection of Haitian stamps, chronologically arranged. The last 4 pages list his Hong Kong stamps. The cover page is a typed carbon copy with pencil annotations in the left margin. The balance of the pages are completely handwritten by Roosevelt.Roosevelt had a special interest in Haiti. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Woodrow Wilson administration, Roosevelt was sent to U.S.-occupied Haiti in January 1917. President Wilson feared that Germany might try to occupy Haiti and threaten the sea route to the Panama Canal. While in Haiti, Roosevelt rode across the island on horseback and investigated obscure places. During that visit, he began collecting the stamps of Haiti. In July 1934, he became the first U.S. President to visit Haiti, when he withdrew all American occupation forces as part of his Good Neighbor Policy.According to a December 1932 article, "His interest in Hong Kong dates back to the finding of some of his grandfather Delano's diplomatic correspondence in the family attic and in this find were some original covers bearing the first two issues of Hong Kong."[1] Roosevelt's maternal grandfather Warren Delano Jr. (1809-1898) made a fortune smuggling opium into Canton, China, for the American trading house of Russell & Company. After losing much of his fortune in the Panic of 1857, Delano returned to Hong Kong in 1860 and rebuilt his fortune.Historical BackgroundFranklin D. Roosevelt was an avid stamp collector. During his lifetime, he collected more than 1.2 million stamps. As a child, he looked to stamps to learn about the world around him. As an adult, they offered solace and relaxation in otherwise busy and hectic times.While President during the 1930s, Roosevelt and Postmaster General James A. Farley avidly discussed stamp designs, colors, and themes. The first stamp they approved in April 1933 depicts George Washington's headquarters at Newburgh, New York, from which 150 years earlier, he had issued a proclamation of peace that marked the end of the American Revolution. Roosevelt personally contributed to the designs of six postage stamps. When presented with three different designs to celebrate the travels of Antarctic explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Roosevelt rejected all three and sketched a global map from memory with dotted lines marking the routes that Byrd took during his lifetime of exploring, which became the final design of the 1933 stamp. Other designs developed or revised by Roosevelt include the 1934 design for a stamp to honor artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler with the painting of his mother, altered by Roosevelt to be "In Memory and in Honor of the Mothers of America," and a 1939 design to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington on a single stamp with the motto "50th Anniversary of Statehood," instead of separate stamps for each state, as the states wanted.In December 1932, President-elect Roosevelt said, "I can almost say that I owe my life to my hobbies, especially stamp collecting." Another source declared, "The Governor freely admits that he would not have known what to do during the early stages of his physical ailment, and during the years that this left him incapacitated and before he began to regain his strength, had it not been for his hobbies-especially stamp collecting. He states that to a certain measure he owes his recovery and life to this."[2]Following the President's death, his family honored his wishes by selling his stamp collection. H. R. Harmer, Phi. (See website for full description).…