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The blog article links Stefan Lorant's own recollection of the event, but the link is broken (fair enough, the blog entry is from 2010). Fortunately though, the link is archived on the Wayback Machine [0], where we can see it is an article from American Heritage, June 1955.

In the linked article Lorent does not specify when exactly he interviewed Edith Carrow Roosevelt, but I think it is fair to assume that the reference to "in the 1950s" is an assumption made by the author of the blog based on when the article was published, and does not cast any doubt on the timeline.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060507100625/http://www.americ...

His book appears to have been published in 1942 or earlier: https://time.com/archive/6786636/books-biography-in-pictures....

I uploaded the book here, I can't find that quote or the photo in it, though:

https://transfer.it/t/wCLoeh9XEZrZ

This came up in a Reddit discussion a while back. Snopes has an article about it, in which they quote a source which says that the actual interview happened in 1948.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/roosevelt-lincoln-funeral/

> But she would have been just three years old at the time of Lincoln's funeral, and while her family and the Roosevelt's family socialized together, even her quoted reminiscence is less than definitive about whether that's actually TR.

While she might not have direct memory of the event, it would not be unheard of for older relatives to explain the picture to her when she was older. Just because she doesn't remember it directly does not automatically make the story of the picture untrue.

So her recollection is that she was in the house to view Lincoln's funeral procession. She didn't, because she was three and got scared, but it was still an event she was a part of.

Even if she didn't remember whether Teddy was standing at that window at that time, she probably knew that she at Teddy and his brother were at the mansion for the event.

So we have the Roosevelt mansion, knowledge that not many boys would have been allowed to be in that window, and confirmation that Teddy Roosevelt was there watching at that time.

I have a few vague memories of being 3. I expect if something dramatic had happened, I'd remember that.

I can guarantee that something dramatic happened, based on observing a few 3 year olds.

Well, at one point I was separated from my mom in downtown London. I wandered aimlessly around until the cops picked me up and took me to the station. They asked me my mom's name - "Mama", and my dad's name "Daddy". Then they asked me where I lived - "in a big house". Eventually my mom showed up at the station and the cops lifted me over the counter back to her.

It was a bit of an adventure for me, but I imagine it was a terrible experience for my mom. I don't recall the interrogation part, but my dad would laugh uproariously when he'd recount how useless the interrogation was.

I've had a soft spot for the bobbies ever since.

> While she might not have direct memory of the event, it would not be unheard of for older relatives to explain the picture to her when she was older. Just because she doesn't remember it directly does not automatically make the story of the picture untrue.

I have a memory of having a tantrum at the Taj Mahal which can't be a real memory because I would have been 3 at the time. But it definitely h appened. It's a reconstructed memory from having seen a photo my dad took from the trip and my dad telling me about it.

Can't be a real memory? That's a bit of a stretch... We do often re-encode our memories: part of us remembers, and part remembers remembering. But certainly when you were 4 you could remember something from when you were 3, and when you are 6 you can probably remember plenty of important things from when you were 4. It's just a question of a particular memory surviving generations of recall, and a question of how each recall helps incrementally re-encode world-truth into our-truth

Possibly, but doesn’t have to be. I grew up in a home that was built as a duplex, one apartment per floor. So the stairs were 17 unpadded wooden steps that were straight down - no landing or turn.

I slipped and fell down them when I was 4. I clearly recall this. But that made me remember that I had done the same thing a year or even two before (which was worse, because at age 4 I was large enough to stop myself before I hit the bottom - not so much at 2-3).

I wouldn’t remember the first incident without the second, but because of it, I do.

The stairs got carpeting shortly after that.

Here's the link mentioned in the article:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090107061334/http://www.americ...

Apparently she was 4 at the time and lived next door:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Roosevelt#Childhood

In one of TR's books (perhaps Rough Riders?), he mentions watching Lincoln's funeral precession as a child, from his family home in New York.