Edith Wilson 1872–1961

Born Wytheville, Virginia First Lady 1915–1921

President Woodrow Wilson had been devoted to his first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, so when she died of Bright’s disease during his second year in office, few imagined that he would be remarried within a year. The grieving president met Edith Bolling Galt through his cousin Helen Woodrow Bones, and the two quickly fell in love. A successful and remarkably independent businesswoman, she drove around Washington, D.C. in an electric car. Edith Wilson brought great energy to their union and an innovative spirit to the White House. As first lady during World War I, when gardeners were in short supply, she used sheep to graze on the White House lawn and donated their wool to the war effort. Despite her aversion to suffragists, who in 1917 began picketing outside the White House, Wilson became the first wife of a sitting president to cast a vote in a U.S. election in 1920.

The White House