Ellen Wilson
Ellen Axson Wilson (May 15, 1860–August 6, 1914),
first wife of Woodrow Wilson, was First Lady of the United States
from 1913 until her death.
Born Ellen Louise Axson in Savannah, Georgia[1], the daughter of
the Reverend Samuel Edward Axson, a Presbyterian minister, and
Margaret Jane (née Hoyt) Axson, Ellen was a lady of refined tastes
with a fondness for art, music and literature.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson first saw her when he was about six and she
only a baby. In April 1883, Woodrow visited his cousin Jesse
Woodrow Wilson in Rome, Georgia and met Ellen again -- she was now
keeping house for her widowed father. He thought, "what splendid
laughing eyes!"[citation needed]. They were engaged five months
later but postponed the wedding, while he did postgraduate work at
Johns Hopkins University and she nursed her ailing father.
Wilson, aged 28, married Ellen, aged 25, on June 24, 1885 at the
home of the bride's paternal grandfather in Savannah, Georgia. The
wedding was performed jointly by his father, the Reverend Joseph R.
Wilson, and her grandfather, the Reverend L. S. K. Axson. They
honeymooned at Waynesville, a mountain resort in western North
Carolina.
That same year Bryn Mawr College offered Dr. Wilson a teaching
position at an annual salary of $1,500. He and his bride lived near
the campus, keeping her little brother with them.
Together, the Wilsons had three daughters:
* Margaret Woodrow Wilson (1886-1944) - singer,
businesswoman.
* Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre (1887-1933) - Born in Gainesville,
Georgia, she attended Goucher College in Baltimore and worked three
years at a settlement house in Philadelphia before marrying Francis
B. Sayre in a White House wedding on November 25, 1913. They
eventually settled at Cambridge, Massachusetts, when Mr. Sayre
joined the faculty of Harvard Law School. Jessie was active in the
League of Women Voters, served on the national board of the YWCA,
and at the time of her death following an appendix operation, was
secretary of the Massachusetts Democratic Committee.
* Eleanor Randolph Wilson McAdoo (1889-1967)
Humorously insisting that her own children must not be born
Yankees, she went to relatives in Georgia for the birth of Margaret
in 1886 and Jessie in 1887. Eleanor, however, was born in
Connecticut in 1889, while Wilson was teaching at Wesleyan
University.
His distinguished career at Princeton University began in 1890,
bringing his wife new social responsibilities. From such demands
she took refuge, as always, in art. She had studied briefly in New
York, and the quality of her paintings compares favorably with
professional art of the period.
As First Lady, Mrs. Wilson painted and drew sketches in a studio
set up on the third floor of the White House, donating much of her
work to charity. She arranged the White House weddings of two of
her daughters.
The Wilsons had preferred to begin the administration without an
inaugural ball, and the First Lady's entertainments were simple,
but her unaffected cordiality made her parties successful. In their
first year she convinced her scrupulous husband that it would be
perfectly proper to invite influential legislators to a private
dinner, and when such an evening led to agreement on a tariff bill,
he told a friend, "You see what a wise wife I have!"
Ellen Louise Wilson's grave in Myrtle Hill Cemetery, Rome, Georgia
with her family graves.
Descendant of slave owners, Ellen Wilson lent her prestige to the
cause of improving housing in the capital's Negro slums. Visiting
dilapidated alleys, she brought them to the attention of debutantes
and Congressmen. (These efforts are portrayed briefly and
sympathetically in the telefilm Backstairs at the White House,
based on a memoir of one African-American family's 52 years of
service to the presidents.) Her death spurred passage of a remedial
bill she had worked for.
Her health failing slowly from Bright's disease, she died in the
White House on August 6, 1914.[1] On the day before her death, she
made her physician promise to tell Wilson "later" that she hoped he
would marry again; she murmured at the end, "...take good care of
my husband." Struggling grimly to control his grief, Wilson took
her to Rome, Georgia for burial among her family. The president
would later marry Edith Bolling Galt in 1915.
She is buried at Myrtle Hill Cemetery.
The Puzzle: Hint, hint substitute 10 for 0, underlined
characters are letters.
42 32.
WEF
82 59.
FA(WA)
You can check your answers for this puzzle on
Geochecker.com.