Ellen Roosevelt

She was an American tennis player.

She started playing tennis with her sister Grace in 1879 when her father installed a tennis court at their mansion 'Rosedale'.

At 22, in only her third appearance at the U.S. Championships, Ellen Roosevelt was victorious in the singles and also took the doubles crown with her older sister Grace in 1890. The siblings—first cousins of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt—were the first sisters to claim a major championship. They were guided by their father John Roosevelt, a strict disciplinarian who made certain they got to bed early and ate wisely and carefully. In 1893, Ellen Roosevelt won her last title of note, taking the U.S. Mixed Doubles crown.

She won the women's singles title at the 1890 U.S. Championships defeating the 1888 and 1889 champion Bertha Townsend in the final in two straight sets. That year she also won the doubles title with her sister. They were the first pair of sisters to win the U.S. Championships and remained the only pair to do so until the Williams sisters equalled their achievement in 1999. At the 1893 U.S. Championships, she won the mixed doubles title partnering Oliver Campbell. Her other career singles highlights include winning the Staten Island Ladies Club Open in 1890.

Ellen won the 1890 singles title and shared the doubles championship that year with her sister Grace. Ellen paired with Clarence Hobart in 1893 to take the mixed doubles title. Hobart found romance with another mixed doubles partner and won the championship with his wife Augusta Schultz in 1905.

Ellen and her sister Grace were fierce competitors, belying the notion that early women’s tennis was merely a genteel past-time for elegant ladies. They actively competed in championships both at tennis clubs in the Hudson Valley (where they resided not far from Springwood, FDR’s birthplace and home) and in tennis centers like Newport and Narragansett, Rhode Island.

She was a first cousin of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and she was posthumously inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1975.