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Edith Wilson ( Bolling, formerly Galt; October 15, 1872 – December 28, 1961) was First Lady of the United States from 1915 to 1921 as the second wife of President Woodrow Wilson. She married the widower Wilson in December 1915, during his first term as president. Edith Wilson played an influential role 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.William Elliott Hazelgrove, Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson (Washington, D.C.: Regency Publishing, 2016); Brian Lamb, Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?: A Tour of Presidential Gravesites (New York: Public Affairs, 2010), p. 119; Judith L. Weaver, "Edith Bolling, Wilson as First Lady: A Study in the Power of Personality, 1919–1920," Presidential Studies Quarterly 15, No. 1 (Winter, 1985), pp. 51–76; and Dwight Young and Margaret Johnson, Dear First Lady: Letters to the White House: From the Collections of the Library of Congress & National Archives (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2008), p. 91.
Bolling was a descendant of the first settlers to arrive at the Virginia Colony. Through her father, she was also a descendant of Mataoka, better known as Pocahontas. Her father was descended from Pocahontas's granddaughter Jane Rolfe, who married Robert Bolling, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 7, 1899, pages 352–53. a wealthy slave-owning planter and merchant. Additionally, she was related, either by blood or through marriage, to Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington, Letitia Tyler, and the Harrison family.
Edith was the seventh of eleven children, two of whom died in infancy.Mayo, p. 170; and McCallops, p. 1. The Bollings were some of the oldest members of Virginia's slave-owning, Planter class prior to the American Civil War. After the war ended and slavery was abolished, Edith's father turned to the practice of law to support his family.Schneider and Schneider, p. 191 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.McCallops, p. 1.
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.Mayo, p. 169. 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 postCivil 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 slaves that they owned had been content with their lives as slaves and had little desire for freedom.Gaines Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913 (Oxford University Press, 1988).
In turn, Grandmother Bolling oversaw Edith's education, teaching her reading, writing, basic math skills, speaking a Franglais, and making dresses. She also instilled in Edith a tendency to make quick judgments and hold strong opinions, personality traits Edith would exhibit her entire life.Schneider and Schneider, p. 191. William Bolling read Classic book English literature aloud to his family at night, hired a tutor to teach Edith, and sometimes took her on his travels. The Bolling family attended church regularly, and Edith became a lifelong, practicing Episcopalian.Gould, p. 237.
When Edith was 15, her father enrolled her at Martha Washington College (a precursor of Emory and Henry College), a finishing school for girls in Abingdon, Virginia. William Holcombe Bolling chose it for its excellent music program.McCallops, p. 2. Edith proved to be an undisciplined, ill-prepared student. She was miserable there, complaining of the school's austerity: the food was poorly prepared, the rooms too cold, and the daily curriculum excessively rigorous, intimidating, and too strictly regimented.Schneider and Schneider, p. 191; and Gould, p. 237. Edith left after only one semester.Mayo, p. 170 Two years later, Edith's father enrolled her in Powell's School for Girls in Richmond, Virginia. Years later, Edith noted that her time at Powell's was the happiest time of her life. Unfortunately for Edith, the school closed at the end of the year after the headmaster suffered an accident that cost him his leg. Concerned about the cost of Edith's education, William Bolling refused to pay for any additional schooling, choosing instead to focus on educating her three brothers.Gould, p. 237; McCallops, p. 3.
Wilson married Galt on December 18, 1915, at her home in Washington, D.C. There were 40 guests. The groom's pastor, Reverend Dr. James H. Taylor of Central Presbyterian Church, and the bride's, Reverend Dr. Herbert Scott Smith of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C., officiated jointly at the ceremony.
Edith Wilson and others in the President's inner circle (including his physician and a few close friends) hid the true extent of the president's illness and disability from the American public. Edith also took over a number of routine duties and details of the executive branch of the government from the onset of Wilson's illness until he left office almost a year and a half later. From October 1919 to the end of Wilson's term on March 4, 1921, Edith, acting in a role she later described as a "stewardship", decided who and which communications and matters of state were important enough to bring to the bedridden president. Edith Wilson later wrote:
I studied every paper sent from the different Secretaries or Senators and tried to digest and present in tabloid form the things that, despite my vigilance, had to go to the President. I, myself, never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs. The only decision that was mine was what was important and what was not, and the very important decision of when to present matters to my husband.Edith became the sole communication link between the President and his Cabinet. She required they send her all pressing matters, memos, correspondence, questions, and requests.
Edith took her role very seriously, even successfully pushing for the removal of Secretary of State Robert Lansing after he conducted a series of Cabinet meetings without the President (or Edith herself) present. She also refused to allow the British ambassador, Edward Grey, an opportunity to present his credentials to the president unless Grey dismissed an aide who was known to have made demeaning comments about her. She assisted President Wilson in filling out paperwork, and would often add new notes or suggestions. She was made privy to classified information, and was entrusted with the responsibility of encoding and decoding encrypted messages.
In 1921, Joe Tumulty (Wilson's chief of staff) wrote: "No public man ever had a more devoted helpmate, and no wife a husband more dependent upon her sympathetic understanding of his problems ... Mrs. Wilson's strong physical constitution, combined with strength of character and purpose, has sustained her under a strain which must have wrecked most women."Joseph Patrick Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him (New York, NY:, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921), 436. In subsequent decades, however, scholars were far more critical in their assessment of Edith Wilson's tenure as First Lady. Phyllis Lee Levin concluded that the effectiveness of Woodrow Wilson's policies was unnecessarily hampered by his wife, "a woman of narrow views and formidable determination".Levin, p. 518. Judith Weaver opined that Edith Wilson underestimated her own role in Wilson's presidency. While she may not have made critical decisions, she did influence both domestic and international policy given her role as presidential gatekeeper.Gregg Phifer, Speech Monographs, Vol. 38 Issue 4 (Nov 1971), p. 278; and Weaver, "Edith Bolling Wilson as First Lady," pp. 51–76. Howard Markel, a medical historian, has taken issue with Edith Wilson's claim of a benign "stewardship". Markel has opined that Edith Wilson "was, essentially, the nation's chief executive until her husband's second term concluded in March of 1921".Howard Markel, "When a secret president ran the country," PBS NewsHour (October 2, 2015). While a widow of moderate education for her time, she nevertheless attempted to protect her husband and his legacy, if not the presidency, even if it meant exceeding her role as First Lady.Hazelgrove, Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson, 2016. This period of her life was dramatized in the 2021 historical fiction podcast Edith! starring Rosamund Pike.
On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war, taking pains to draw a link with Wilson's April 1917 declaration of war. Edith Wilson was present during Roosevelt's address to Congress.Emily S. Rosenberg (2025). 082233206X, Duke University Press. 082233206X On April 14, 1945, she attended Roosevelt's funeral at the White House. She later attended the January 20, 1961 inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.
Edith Wilson died of congestive heart failure on December 28, 1961, at age 89. She was to have been the guest of honor that day at the dedication ceremony for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia, on what would have been her husband's 105th birthday. She was buried next to her husband at the Washington National Cathedral.
The Edith Bolling Wilson Birthplace Foundation & Museum in Wytheville, Virginia was established in 2008. The foundation has stabilized the first lady's birthplace and childhood home; it had been identified in May 2013 by Preservation Virginia as an Endangered Historic Site. The foundation's programs and exhibits aspire to build public awareness "honoring Mrs. Wilson's name, the contributions she made to this country, the institution of the presidency, and for the example she sets for women." The Foundation shares First Lady Mrs. Wilson's journey "From Wytheville to The White House".
In 2015, a former historic bank building in Wytheville, located on Main Street, was dedicated to the First Lady and bears her name. Adapted as the Bolling Wilson Hotel, it serves Wytheville residents and travelers alike.
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