Teddy Roosevelt's Confederate Ancestors

I came across an American Presidents Blog on two of Teddy Roosevelt's maternal uncles who served in the Confederate Navy.

Both were on the maternal side of his family. One was an admiral, James Dunwoody Bulloch. The other one, Irvine Bulloch, was the youngest officer on the raider Alabama and in command of one of the broadside 32-pounder cannons. He had the honor of firing the last two shots before the ship sank.

Roosevelt went to his maternal family's home in Roswell, Georgia, in 1905, becoming the first sitting US president to visit the south since Abraham Lincoln visited Richmond in the waning days of the war.

Wikipedia has a nice picture of the two brothers and this further information.

James Bulloch was in the US Navy for 14 years before going into private business. When the Civil War broke out, he became a Confederate agent in Europe. Among his many accomplishments was the construction of both the CSS Florida and CSS Alabama. Being a Confederate agent, the general amnesty did not apply to him, so he and his brother remained in Liverpool, England after the war.

After the war, at his nephew's urging, he wrote the two volume "The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe." He left Theodore Roosevelt $30,000 in his will and is buried in Liverpool with these words on his tombstone, "American by birth, and Englishman by choice."

Let's File this Under Things I Didn't Know. --RoadDog