Edith Bolling Wilson

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For other people named Edith Wilson, see Edith Wilson (disambiguation).

White House portrait

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (October 15, 1872 – December 28, 1961), second wife of Woodrow Wilson, was First Lady of the United States from 1915 to 1921. She has been labeled "the Secret President" and "the first woman to run the government" for the role she played when her husband suffered prolonged and disabling illness.

A direct descendant of Virginia aristocracy and as well as the famous American Indian, Pocahontas, through her granddaughter Jane Rolfe Bolling, Edith was born in Wytheville in 1872, seventh among eleven children of Sallie White and Judge William Holcombe Bolling. At 15 she went to Martha Washington College to study music, with a second year at a smaller school in Richmond, Virginia.

While visiting a married sister in Washington, D.C., Edith met Norman Galt, a prosperous jeweler; in 1896 they were married. For 12 years she lived as a contented young matron in the capital, with vacations abroad. However, her personal life was not without tragedy: she gave birth to a son in 1903 who lived only for a few days (the difficult birth also left her unable to bear additional children), and in 1908 her husband died unexpectedly. Edith Galt then chose a manager who operated the family's jewelry firm with financial success.

By a quirk of fate and a chain of friendships, Edith Galt met President Wilson in 1915, when he was still mourning his first wife, Ellen Wilson. A man who depended on female companionship, Wilson took an instant liking to the widow Galt, who was charming and intelligent and plumply 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 on December 18, 1915, at her home. They had been a romantic item for such a long period of time, however, that Washington wags were quick to poke fun at the marriage. As one joke went, when Edith Galt heard the President propose marriage, she nearly fell out of bed. Additionally, a typographic error in a Washington newspaper was much closer to the mark than intended. Prior to their marriage an item meant to describe the president's social evening at a local theater with Mrs. Galt included the phrase "rather than paying attention to the play the President spent the evening entertaining Mrs. Galt." What was printed in the first run of the Washington Post was the phrase "rather than paying attention to the play the President spent the evening entering Mrs. Galt." [emphasis added] The first run of the paper was recalled, however there were a few copies which went unaccounted for. An original copy of that paper is a highly prized collectible, for obvious reasons.

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.

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, Edith 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. In My Memoir, published in 1939, she called her role a "stewardship" and stated emphatically that her husband's doctors had urged that course upon her. Others, however, disagreed with her version of events and called it revisionism. As one historian, Phyllis Levin, a former reporter for the New York Times, wrote, Edith Wilson was "a woman of narrow views and formidable determination" and blamed her for numerous diplomatic failures that occurred during her husband's incapacitation.

In 1921, the Wilsons retired to a comfortable home in northwest Washington, where he died three years later. A highly respected figure in the society of the capital, though rumored to be quite open in her admiration for younger men, Edith Wilson lived on to ride in John F. Kennedy's inaugural parade. She died on the morning of December 28, 1961, the 105th anniversary of her second husband's birth. She was 89 years old at her death, making her the third longest lived first lady after Bess Wallace Truman and Lady Bird Johnson. On the day of her death, she was to have been the guest of honor at the dedication ceremony for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia. [1] Mrs. Wilson left her home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to be made into a museum honoring her husband. The Woodrow Wilson House opened as a museum in 1964.