Woodrow and Edith Bolling Wilson, 1916. Library
of Congress
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A White House Worker Remembers: President
Wilson's Grief and Joy, 1914–1915
White House staff in the Woodrow Wilson administration experienced both the death
of Wilson's first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, on August 6, 1914; and Wilson's second
marriage, sixteen months later. Chief Usher Ike Hoover recalls this sensitive
period in the life of President Wilson, and its effect on the White House as
a home and workplace.
After
Ellen Wilson's death, writes Hoover, "the
place [became] strangely lonesome and different.
Mrs. Wilson had . . . endeared herself to
all."1 The
President, comments Hoover, "accepted
the inevitable with a grace and a charm that
was inspiring to all about him."2
Within a few months, Wilson began seeing
a widow, Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt.3 By
the summer of 1915, notes Hoover, "Everyone
about the place still had sweet memories
of [the first Mrs. Wilson], and yet their
sympathies were with the President in his
new enterprise. . . ."4
The
couple married on December 18, 1915. Ike
Hoover records that Wilson had to arrange
for the marriage license "in the regular
way. . . . He had to pay his fee of a dollar
out of his own pocket, and answer all questions
just like the humblest citizen."5
1 Irwin Hood Hoover, Forty-two Years
in the White House, 1934 (Westport: Greenwood
Reprint, 1974), 60.
2 Ibid.
3 Hoover, 62.
4 Ibid., 64.
5 Ibid., 71.
Read More:
William Seale, "The White House Staff," in The President's House.
Washington: White House Historical Association, 1986, 818–822.
Ellen
Wilson and Edith Wilson |
