Date:  ca. 1930

Image Number:  JH11cdJH01

Comments:  Pine Knot is a rustic cottage near Keene, Virginia, that served as the Albemarle County getaway for President Theodore Roosevelt and his family from 1905-1908.  The cottage sits on a knoll above Miller's Creek on a land tract fronting on the old Scottsville Road, now called Route 712.  This was the same road used by General Philip Sheridan as he traveled with over 5000 Union soldiers on their March 1865 mission to destroy the James River and Kanawha Canal locks near Scottsville.

In May 1905, Edith Kermit Roosevelt purchased this unfinished farmhand's cottage and fifteen acres from William "Willie" Wilmer, an old family friend and owner of Plain Dealing farm nearby.  The cottage's purchase price of $280 included the cost of adding a porch plus some remodeling of the cottage's interior.  These alterations consisted of adding two end fireplaces, making one 12' x 32' single lodge room of the first floor, and partitioning the second floor into three small bedrooms.  Edith named the cottage "Pine Knot" because of the abundance of pine trees surrounding it.

President Roosevelt's first visit to Pine Knot occurred on June 9, 1905, and as described in Teddy's letter to his son, Kermit, he found it to be "a perfectly delightful little place."  During that weekend, he rustled up a breakfast of fried eggs and bacon and later surprised his wife by cooking up two chickens.  Edith, who did not cook, boiled water from a spring down the hill for their tea.  Between 1905-1908, Roosevelt made eight trips to Pine Knot where he enjoyed sitting in a rocking chair, reading books, watching birds, taking long walks, and clearing away small trees blocking their porch view. 

Often Pine Knot is described as Roosevelt's hunting lodge because he loved to come there at hunting time.  Wild turkeys were plentiful on his woodlands, and Teddy hunted them obsessively for long hours until finally shooting one in the fall of 1906.  Teddy also was fond of hunting fox with a pack of six to eight dogs.  The Omohundro family, who lived nearby, told of a Roosevelt hunting trip with Dick McDaniel, a black man from Esmont who was Roosevelt's trusty hunting guide and respected woods companion at Pine Knot.  Dick also owned a fine pack of fox hounds, which he always had available when Teddy wanted to hunt fox.  One brisk fall morning, Teddy and Dick hunted and hunted, but their dogs just didn't strike a trail. Off to the side, they could hear a big fox chase going on with hounds barking and scurrying about.  Teddy said, "I wonder whose dogs those are?" 

Dick: "I think they belong to a black man named George Monroe."

Teddy: "Could you get those dogs for us?  I believe they're better than the ones we have." 

Dick headed over to Monroe's home and arrived just after he had returned home from his successful hunt.  When the door opened, Dick said to Monroe, "Mr. Roosevelt would like to borrow your dogs to go for a hunt." 

Monroe: "We don't loan our dogs to nobody!" 

Dick:  "But, sir, this is Mr. Roosevelt...the President of the United States!" 

Monroe: "I don't give a damn if he's Booker T. Washington, he's not going to get my dogs!"

When the Roosevelts came to Pine Knot, they came as a family with one to several of their six children in tow (only Alice did not visit).  Many years later George Omohundro asked Archibald Roosevelt about how many Secret Service men accompanied the family on their Pine Knot trips. "Secret Service men? We didn't need any Secret Service men---our father was the only protection we needed." Perhaps unbeknownst to her son, Edith feared for her husband's safety, and after May 1907, two Secret Service men guarded Pine Knot at night. Edith kept such evening security details a secret from her husband, who would have been upset had he known.  Teddy afterall was always confident of his ability to defend himself.

Archibald Roosevelt described one fall trip to Pine Knot where they had dinner with the Wilmers at Plain Dealing and then afterwards rode over to Pine Knot where all the Roosevelts went upstairs to bed.  There were three rooms upstairs: Edith and Teddy slept in the west bedroom with one fireplace; the two girls slept in the center room in which the stairwell entered; and the three boys slept in the east bedroom with the other fireplace.  The beds were covered by straw ticks, which were made of heavy striped fabric and filled with straw.  Archie stripped off his clothes, pulled on his nightshirt, and was the first of his brothers to jump into their bed...only to be stung unmercifully by a swarm of wasps nesting in the straw.  Archie considered himself quite fortunate to have survived his many wasp stings.

In July 1911, Edith Roosevelt purchased 75 more acres at Pine Knot, anticipating that her husband would run for a second term as President.  But they never returned to Pine Knot after their last visit in May 1908.  However, this property stayed in the Roosevelt family even after Teddy's death, and Edith authorized its use by the local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops.  In 1941, Edith sold Pine Knot to George Omohundro, their neighbor and Teddy's hunting partner.  Today in 2002, the Edith and Theodore Roosevelt Pine Knot Foundation manages the Pine Knot property.

ESMONT, Va., Sept. 4, 1908 - A driving party, intent on visiting the show places in Albemarle County, VA, recently found evidences of the habitual occupation of Pine Knot, Mrs. Roosevelt's little shack. Investigation of the premises discovered a missing slat in a shutter at the back of the house and an absent window pane that had been cut out as neatly as if a glazier had performed the operation.

A member of the party found it an easy matter to press the rather primitive spring that held the window down, and on entering the house discovered a chair drawn up to the President's pine dining table and a lately used plate and napkin.

As the Roosevelt family have not visited Pine Knot since the early Spring and as Mrs. Roosevelt is much too good a housekeeper to leave her home in disorder, there is only one conclusion to arrive at, and that is that the President's Virginia home is being occupied, free of rent, by some chance visitor, who finds in the secluded spot a safe hiding place. Further investigation of the place showed a bowl half full of sugar, a cup hanging in a cupboard, whose doors were evidently left ajar for convenience; a cider pail of water, and a bed that had been slept in and "smoothed over," as they say in Virginia.

Who this mysterious occupant is is a mystery to the neighborhood, whose inhabitants boast of the fact that the President's home is regarded as private property and not a public showplace. It is believedthat some gentleman of the road has been using Pine Knot as Summer quarters.

This W.E. Burgess postcard is from the collection of Jack Hamner of Scottsville, Virginia.