7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7society that winter. Following family tradition, she devoted
time to community service, including teaching in a settle-
ment house on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Soon after
Eleanor returned, Franklin Roosevelt, her distant cousin,
began to court her, and they were married on March 17,
1905, in New York City. Between 1906 and 1916 Eleanor
gave birth to six children, one of whom died in infancy.
After Franklin won a seat in the New York Senate in
1911, the family moved to Albany, where Eleanor was initi-
ated into the job of political wife. When Franklin was
appointed assistant secretary of the navy in 1913, the fam-
ily moved to Washington, D.C., and Eleanor spent the
next few years performing the social duties expected of an
“official wife.”
With the entry of the United States into World War I in
April 1917, Eleanor was able to resume her volunteer work.
She visited wounded soldiers and worked for the Navy–
Marine Corps Relief Society and in a Red Cross canteen.
In 1918 Eleanor discovered that Franklin had been hav-
ing an affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Franklin
refused Eleanor’s offer of a divorce and agreed to stop see-
ing Mercer. The Roosevelts’ marriage settled into a routine
in which both of them kept independent agendas while
remaining respectful of and affectionate toward each other.
But their relationship had ceased to be an intimate one.
Eleanor’s interest in politics later increased, partly as a
result of her decision to help in her husband’s political
career after he was stricken with polio in 1921 and partly as
a result of her desire to work for important causes. She
joined the Women’s Trade Union League and became
active in the New York State Democratic Party. As a mem-
ber of the Legislative Affairs Committee of the League of
Women Voters, she began studying the Congressional Record
and learned to evaluate voting records and debates.