Moses Smith

FDR's Hyde Park neighbor and friend, Moses Smith.

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Significance:

Farmer

Place of Birth:

Kripplebush, NY

Date of Birth:

October 5, 1876

Place of Death:

Hyde Park, NY

Date of Death:

August 9, 1959

Place of Burial:

Hyde Park, NY

Cemetery Name:

Union Cemetery

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest neighbors in Hyde Park was Moses Smith who lived at Woodlawns, one of the farm properties adjacent to the Roosevelt Estate. FDR bought Woodlawns in 1911, the first piece of land he owned independently of his mother, and in 1920 rented it to Smith who remained on the land as a tenant farmer until two years after FDR’s death. Smith was 

FDR liked to stop at Woodlawns to talk with Mose, as he was called, about farming. “FDR used to come over to talk about his tree farm,” Smith’s son, Clifford, remembered. “He planted Norway spruce and Douglas fir all over what is now Val-Kill—and he and my father would talk about seeds, and thinning, and commiserate on good years and bad. [FDR] loved to feel he was using the land to good advantage.”

FDR’s forestry advisor, Nelson Brown, reported that “Mose was probably the most frank and outspoken close personal friend of FDR. He had no hesitancy in using language to which he was accustomed—and this wasn’t always language that was commonly heard around official circles of the regular or summer White House.” FDR used to stop along the road to chat with neighbors from behind the wheel of his hand-controlled Ford. Brown remembers one such occasion when a large group had gathered around FDR’s car along Violet Avenue. After a while, FDR asked if Mose was there. Mose came forward from the outside of the circle, took his hat off and his pipe out of his mouth, and asked deferentially if there was anything he could do for the president. FDR told a joke and “Gradually,” Brown reports, “the conversation became more friendly and intimate and soon Mose replaced his hat, put his big old pipe in his mouth and warmed up to the occasion. Finally, he fairly stuck his finger into FDR’s nose and said ‘Look here, young feller, I want you to tell me what you are going to do down there in Washington about this war business.’” Later, when FDR and Brown were alone in the woods, FDR said, “Say, did you see how far Mose got his finger into my nose?”

In an oral history interview conducted in 1948, Moses Smith recalled how FDR had responded when he learned the fate one winter of the elderly members of the Wilber family of Hyde Park—one brother froze to death between the barn and the house; one ended up in the poorhouse, and one in the asylum. “Moses,” FDR said, “this thing can’t go on, I’m going to plan some way or somehow to put over an old age security that the poorhouse in time will actually be done away with.” Smith believed that the idea of Social Security had its origins in Hyde Park.

Although Social Security had other, more influential sources, FDR’s intimate knowledge of the lives and economic problems of his Hyde Park and Warm Springs neighbors no doubt shaped his belief in the importance of such programs.