Rebel Bride Alice Roosevelt (1906)
If any woman personifies the term “spitfire,” it’s Alice Roosevelt. The beautiful, genteel daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt shocked fine society in Washington DC. Alice smoked cigarettes. She raced her car around Washington DC, played poker, wore pants, and loved to party. Alice even wore her pet snake named Emily Spinach, around her neck. President Roosevelt said “I can be president of the United States, or I can attend to Alice. I cannot possibly do both.” She is pictured here on her wedding day in 1906, when she married Ohio Republican House Speaker Nicholas Longworth. Marriage didn’t curtail her antics, though. Alice’s daughter Paulina may actually be Idaho Senator William Borah’s child. Despite paternity rumors, the Longworths stayed married until his death in 1931. When asked if she wanted to be buried next to Nicholas when she died, Alice declared it a “fate worse than death.”