Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt, 1872-1961

<p>Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was second wife of the 28th President, Woodrow Wilson. She served as First Lady from 1915 to 1921. After the President suffered a severe stroke, she pre-screened all matters of state, functionally running the Executive branch of government for the remainder of Wilson’s second term.</p>

<p>“Secret President,” “first woman to run the government” — so legend has labeled a First Lady whose role gained unusual significance when her husband suffered prolonged and disabling illness. A happy, protected childhood and first marriage had prepared Edith Wilson for the duties of helpmate and hostess; widowhood had taught her something of business matters.</p>

<p>Descendant of Virginia aristocracy, she was born in Wytheville in 1872, seventh among eleven children of Sallie White and Judge William Holcombe Bolling. Until the age of 12 she never left the town; at 15 she went to Martha Washington College to study music, with a second year at a smaller school in Richmond.</p>

<p>Visiting a married sister in Washington, pretty young Edith met a businessman named Norman Galt; in 1896 they were married. For 12 years she lived as a contented (though childless) young matron in the capital, with vacations abroad. In 1908 her husband died unexpectedly. Shrewdly, Edith Galt chose a good manager who operated the family’s jewelry firm with financial success.</p>

<p>By a quirk of fate and a chain of friendships, Mrs. Galt met the bereaved President, still mourning profoundly for his first wife. A man who depended on feminine companionship, the lonely Wilson took an instant liking to Mrs. Galt, charming and intelligent and unusually pretty. Admiration changed swiftly to love. In proposing to her, he made the poignant statement that “in this place time is not measured by weeks, or months, or years, but by deep human experiences…” They were married privately on December 18, 1915, at her home; and after they returned from a brief honeymoon in Virginia, their happiness made a vivid impression on their friends and White House staff.</p>

<p>Though the new First Lady had sound qualifications for the role of hostess, the social aspect of the administration was overshadowed by the war in Europe and abandoned after the United States entered the conflict in 1917. Edith Wilson submerged her own life in her husband’s, trying to keep him fit under tremendous strain. She accompanied him to Europe when the Allies conferred on terms of peace.</p>

<p>Wilson returned to campaign for Senate approval of the peace treaty and the League of Nations Covenant. His health failed in September 1919; a stroke left him partly paralyzed. His constant attendant, Mrs. Wilson took over many routine duties and details of government. But she did not initiate programs or make major decisions, and she did not try to control the executive branch. She selected matters for her husband’s attention and let everything else go to the heads of departments or remain in abeyance. Her “stewardship,” she called this. And in My Memoir, published in 1939, she stated emphatically that her husband’s doctors had urged this course upon her.</p>

<p>In 1921, the Wilsons retired to a comfortable home in Washington, where he died three years later. A highly respected figure in the society of the capital, Mrs. Wilson lived on to ride in President Kennedy’s inaugural parade. She died later in 1961: on December 28, the anniversary of her famous husband’s birth.</p>

<p>Edith Wilson (née Bolling, formerly Edith Bolling Galt; October 15, 1872 – December 28, 1961), second wife of President Woodrow Wilson, was First Lady of the United States from 1915 to 1921. She married the widower Wilson in December 1915, during his first term as president. Edith Wilson is notable for the influential role she played in President Wilson's administration following the severe stroke he suffered in October 1919. For the remainder of her husband's presidency, she managed the office of the president, a role she later described as a "stewardship," and determined which communications and matters of state were important enough to bring to the attention of the bedridden president.</p>

<p>Edith Bolling was born October 15, 1872, in Wytheville, Virginia, to circuit court judge William Holcombe Bolling and his wife Sarah "Sallie" Spears (née White). Her birthplace, the Bolling Home, is now a museum located in Wytheville's Historic District.</p>

<p>Edith Bolling was a descendant of the earliest English settler colonials to Virginia Colony. Through her father, she was also a direct descendant of Mataoka, better known as Pocahontas, the daughter of Wahunsenacawh, the Paramount weroance of the Powhatan Confederacy. As a condition of her release from English captivity, Mataoka married John Rolfe, the first English settler to cultivate tobacco as an export commodity. Their granddaughter, Jane Rolfe, married Robert Bolling, a wealthy slave-holding planter and merchant. John Bolling, the son of Jane Rolfe and Robert Bolling, had six surviving children with his wife, Mary Kennon; each of those children married and had surviving children.</p>

<p>Edith was the seventh of eleven children, two of whom died in infancy. The Bollings were some of the oldest members of Virginia's slave-holding, planter elite prior to the American Civil War. After the Civil War, Edith's father turned to the practice of law to support his family. Unable to pay taxes on his extensive properties, and forced to give up the family's plantation seat, William Holcombe Bolling moved to Wytheville, where most of his children were born.</p>

<p>The Bolling household was a large one, and Edith grew up within the confines of a sprawling, extended family. In addition to eight surviving siblings, Edith's grandmothers, aunts and cousins also lived in the Bolling household. Many of the women in Edith's family lost husbands during the war. The Bollings had been staunch supporters of the Confederate States of America, were proud of their Southern planter heritage, and in early childhood, taught Edith in the post-Civil War South's narrative of the Lost Cause. As was often the case among the planter elite, the Bollings justified slave ownership, saying that the persons that they owned had been content with their lives as chattel and had little desire for freedom.</p>