Isaac Roosevelt

Isaac Roosevelt (FDR's great-great-grandfather) is depicted here by America's most well known portrait painter- Gilbert Stuart. Stuart is known for his famous unfinished portrait of George Washington.

Isaac Roosevelt was a sugar merchant whose opposition to British trade laws and their reduction of profits drove him to the Revolutionary cause. In the Roosevelt family he was known as "the Patriot." He voted for independence and when the English troops occupied New York, he abandoned his business and home and came to Dutchess County.