James E. Amos

James Edward Amos was born on January 29, 1879 in Washington, D.C.¹ As a young man, he worked as a butler in several wealthy households. His father was a D.C. police officer often stationed in Rock Creek Park, where President Theodore Roosevelt rode horses. The two men became acquainted, and Amos’s father asked the president to hire his son at the White House, which he did in 1901.² 

Amos’s first job at the White House was watching over and serving meals to the president’s young children, particularly Ethel, Archie,and Quentin (Alice, Ted, and Kermit were often away at school). Amos also umpired Quentin’s baseball games with local boys on the White House Lawn.³ The job was challenging for, as Amos said, the children “were bursting with health, animal spirits and mischief.”⁴ But he excelled at the job, and after three weeks the president increased his responsibilities to include assisting with food and drink service for the president and first lady and their guests.⁵ While butlering at the White House, Amos claimed he was “present at many important gatherings and many historic conferences which took place around that board where Mr. Roosevelt entertained princes and policemen, statesmen and prize-fighters, diplomats and cowboys.”⁶

Over the course of his White House tenure, Amos’s job responsibilities changed. “My duties were of such a varied nature,” said Amos in his memoir, “that it would be hard to classify them.”⁷ Though Roosevelt most frequently referred to him as a butler, Amos’s responsibilities came to resemble those of a valet, or personal attendant to the president.⁸ President Roosevelt and First Lady Edith Roosevelt tasked him with accompanying the president around the White House to not only serve him food and drink but help maintain his schedule. Amos also accompanied the president when he traveled and would often pay Roosevelt’s bills for him, then bring the receipts to the first lady for reimbursement. Amos claimed in his memoir that “my orders came usually from Mrs. Roosevelt. During those White House days she was my real boss.”⁹ 

When Roosevelt’s term as president ended in 1909, Amos agreed to continue working at the White House for several weeks into the presidency of William Howard Taft “to help some of the new employees get the hang of things.” Amos claimed that President Taft asked him to stay on full-time but he refused, instead taking a job at the New York Customs House that Roosevelt had helped secure for him.¹⁰ He only stayed in that job briefly, however, for in 1910 Roosevelt hired him to be his valet at Sagamore Hill, the Roosevelt family home in New York. After three years, Amos began working for William J. Burns’s private detective agency, though he returned to Sagamore Hill to work part-time as Roosevelt’s valet when the former president’s health declined.¹¹ Amos heard Roosevelt’s last words: “James, will you please put out the light?” and was present when Roosevelt passed away in his sleep on January 6, 1919.¹² Over the course of his career working for Roosevelt, the two men became close, with Amos writing: “Mr. Roosevelt was not only my employer, but he was until his death my dear friend.”¹³ Roosevelt himself had said of Amos: “I trust him and believe in him just as I would believe in one of my own family.”¹⁴

In 1921, Amos began working for the Bureau of Investigation (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI), becoming one of the first African-American agents there. He worked in this capacity until 1952 and was involved in several high-profile cases including the arrest of Nazi spies during World War II.¹⁵ James E. Amos passed away on December 15, 1953 and was buried in Flushing Cemetery in New York.¹⁶