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Eleanor Roosevelt

American diplomat and activist, First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945 (1884–1962)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ83396 ↗
Source-derived summary

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt ( EL-in-or ROH-zə-velt; October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving first lady of the United States, during her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms as president from 1933 to 1945. Through her travels, public engagement, and advocacy, she largely redefined the role. Widowed in 1945, she served as a United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952, and took a leading role in designing the text and gaining international support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1948, she was given a standing ovation by the assembly upon their adoption of the declaration. President Harry S. Truman called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.

Roosevelt was a member of the prominent and wealthy Roosevelt and Livingston families and a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. She had an unhappy childhood, having suffered the deaths of both parents and one of her brothers at a young age. At 15, she attended Allenswood Boarding Academy in London and was deeply influenced by its founder and director Marie Souvestre. Returning to the U.S., she married her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1905.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Eleanor Roosevelt” is american diplomat and activist, First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945 (1884–1962). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Eleanor, Roosevelt and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1884, 1962, 1933, 1945—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1884-10-11. For this dossier, Eleanor, Roosevelt and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american diplomat and activist, First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945 (1884–1962)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q83396. VIAF identifies the subject as 76325766. The Library of Congress control number is n79144645. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1962, 1933 and 1945.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Eleanor Roosevelt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.