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===Marriage=== Curtis met his future first wife Anna "Sis" Roosevelt, nine years his junior, in Dec. 1925 at a dinner party, given by Mr. and Mrs. Walter Douglas in their home on Fifth Avenue, New York for their two daughters Elizabeth and "Kay". Anna was the eldest child and only daughter of [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]] and his wife [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], who would several years later become the 32nd U.S. president and the first lady. At the time however, F.D.R. after having been a New York state senator, Assistant Secretary of the Navy and a U.S. vice-presidential contender (in 1920), was Vice-President of the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Baltimore. <table><tr><td>"Anne was eighteen, unhappy at Cornell, where she never wanted to be, and still more unhappy at home, with all its tensions and undercurrents, particularly between her mother and grandmother. She wanted 'to get out,' and became engaged to Curtis Dall, a rather conventional and balding financier associated with Lehman Brothers. Then thirty, he seemed appealing to Anna above all for his apparent stability; but Eleanor was not sure. 'I don't think she even thinks she's serious but he is and I'm not sure she didn't let herself get a bit further than she meant to be!' " (Cook, p. 330) At Cornell University, Anna was taking a brief course in agriculture, and after "...their three-month engagement" (''F.D.R.'', p. 11) they were married, each for the first time, in Hyde Park, Dutchess County, [[New York]], on 25 June 1926. Kay Douglas was the maid-of-honor. One slight discrepancy here is that their engagement was announced on 23 Jan 1926.<sup>[[#Footnotes 2|D]]</sup> It's probable that they went somewhere in Europe for their honeymoon, as they are returning to New York a month later on the S.S. Celtic, sailing from Liverpool.</td><td>http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wjhonson/CurtisDall.jpg<br>The Curtis Dall's and the James Roosevelts</td></tr></table> Sarah Roosevelt, Anna's grandmother, gave the newly-married couple an "...expensive cooperative apartment" about 1927. (Cook, p 330-1) Perhaps this is the East 65th St address they state in a 1929 ship list. Some time later they took up residence also in North Tarrytown, Westchester County, New York. It's quite possible they were splitting time, commuting between the two locations. "...I acquired some land on the northwestern bank of Lake Pocantico, and built a house overlooking the lake....Across the lake was the very large estate of John D. Rockefeller and his son John D., Jr."(''F.D.R.'', p. 26) This was evidently the estate called "Panache" on Sleepy Hollow Road which is mentioned much later in a piece in the ''New York Times'', dated 31 Jan 1934. It's not yet clear exactly when Curtis built it, but it certainly existed by at least 1934. In 1924, F.D.R. had "...made a dramatic appearance at the Democratic convention to nominate Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York for president"<sup>[[#Footnotes 2|E]]</sup>. Smith urged Roosevelt to run for governor of New York in 1928. Roosevelt telegraphed his daughter and son-in-law Dall:"Some people here want me to run for Governor of New York this fall. What do you think about it? Please wire. Love, FDR". To which the reply was: "Received your most interesting wire. Think it is a great idea. Believe you will win. Will do everything possible to help you and the cause."(''F.D.R.'' p. 31) The story is repeated in ''The Lethbridge Herald'' with the additional information that Mr and Mrs Dall upon receiving the telegram, and before sending their reply from Tarrytown, consulted with their neighbor the banker Paul Warburg.<sup>[[#Footnotes 3|G]]</sup>
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