Her last words, 'Never mind, it's all right,' were reportedly spoken to her friend Sara Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mother, before Bamie slipped into a coma and died. A later owner of the house was Rear Admiral William Sheffield Cowles, whose wife, Anna Roosevelt Cowles, was the sister of President Theodore Roosevelt, who visited Farmington in October of 1901. Anna Roosevelt Cowles died on the night of August 25, 1931, aged 76. Anna Roosevelt Cowles (Janu August 25, 1931) was the older sister of United States President Theodore Roosevelt and an aunt of Eleanor Roosevelt. Designed in an elaborately detailed Georgian-style, the house is known as Oldgate because of the property’s front gate, which features a broken scroll pediment and an Asian design signifying “peace and prosperity.” In the nineteenth century, the house was home to Thomas Cowles, a prominent Farmington resident, politician and abolitionist.

He may have employed former Hessian soldiers, who had also been prisoners, as carpenters in the construction of the house.

Sprats had been a British officer during the Revolutionary War, but was captured and remained in America after the war. In 1790, Zenas employed the British architect William Sprats to build a newer and grander house around the older one. Zenas’s brother, Solomon Cowles, lived in a house just across Meadow Road. In 1786, the wealthy Farmington merchant Zenas Cowles bought a house on Main Street, at Meadow Lane, that had been lived in by blacksmith Isaac Bidwell (and earlier by the town’s first two ministers).

Bamie roosevelt