Family Childhood and Schooling Wilson’s grandfather James Wilson migrated to the United States from Ulster Ireland in 1807 He married Anne Adams who came on the same ship James Wilson became a newspaper publisher in Steubenville Ohio One of his sons Joseph Ruggles Wilson was Woodrow Wilson’s father He became a Presbyterian minister and teacher Janet Wilson’s mother was Jessie Woodrow She was born in Carlisle England just across the border from Scotland Her father Thomas Woodrow was a Scottish Presbyterian minister In 1836 he brought his family to the United States In time he settled settled in Ohio and there his daughter married and Joseph Ruggles Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28 1856 in Staunton Virginia where his father was minister of the First Presbyterian Church Staunton lies along the Shenandoah River 39 miles 63 kilometers northwest of Charlottesville Tommy as he was called in his childhood had two older sisters Marion and Anne A brother Joseph Ruggles Wilson Jr was ten years younger 12 Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson’s boyhood home is located at 419 Seventh Street in downtown Augusta Georgia Today it is a National Historic Landmark and house museum Tommy was a year old when the family moved to Augusta Georgia He remembered remembered standing as a child of four beside the garden gate and hearing a man say in great excitement that Abraham Lincoln was elected and there was to be war He ran into the house to ask his father what it meant He would see a great deal of the destruction and waste from war in the South and learn to hate it His father although having grown up in the North supported some of the South’s causes and served during the Civil War as a chaplain with the Confederate 13
Woodrow Wilson army His church in Augusta was turned into a military hospital The Wilson family was happy and affectionate affectionate Tommy and his father were unusually close Apparently dyslexic from childhood Tommy did not learn to read until after he was ten and never became a rapid reader The boy did not go to school until he was thirteen Until then his father had been his only teacher Dr Wilson took the boy on visits visits to the neighboring cotton gin corn mill iron foundry and ammunition plant and explained how they operated He taught him Wilson’s father Joseph was a minister at the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta During the Civil War the church served as a Confederate military hospital 14
Early Life and Education to look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary and to repeat them until he could use them easily He taught him how to write simply and express his meaning exactly This skill with words helped make Wilson famous In 1870 when the boy was fourteen the family moved to Columbia South Carolina where his father taught at the Theological Seminary and his uncle James Woodrow was the leading light of the seminary faculty It was a lonely period and Tommy amused himself himself by studying nautical terms and writing a fanciful yarn of the sea He imagined himself to be Admiral Wilson of the United States Navy whose fleet destroyed a nest of pirates in the South Pacific The story took the form of daily reports directed to the Navy Department at Washington DC He began to read books on the science of government A picture of William Gladstone prime minister of Great Britain hung over his desk He explained to his cousin That is Gladstone the greatest statesman that ever lived I intend to be a statesman too A College Student In 1873 Wilson entered Davidson College near Charlotte North Carolina He was 15
