Ohio History Journal

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The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

VOLUME 67 ~ NUMBER 1 ~ JANUARY 1958

 

 

 

Woodrow Wilson's First Romance

By GEORGE C. OSBORN*

 

 

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about Abraham Lincoln's romance

with Ann Rutledge. Although Ann first aroused Lincoln's romantic

emotions, very few facts are known about this love affair. Indeed,

nearly all that has been written about Ann and Abe's romance is

conjecture. Although most Americans have heard of Lincoln's first

romance, not many realize that Woodrow Wilson's initial venture

into the world of romance ended unsuccessfully. Lincoln lost Ann

through death, but in the case of Wilson, Hattie Woodrow rejected

his suit.

In the fall of 1879, Tommy Wilson, as Woodrow was called

then, entered the law school of the University of Virginia. Across

the Blue Ridge Mountains from Charlottesville was Staunton,

where, more than twenty-two years earlier, Tommy Wilson was

born. Here, in the fall of 1879, several of his cousins were attending

the Augusta Female Seminary. The school "was housed in the old

church where his father had once occupied the pulpit and [where]

he himself had been baptised."1 Tommy knew a lot of people in

Staunton. As Tommy wrote, "I'm made much of because I'm my

father's son: and I'm made much of with all the cordial warmth of

 

* George C. Osborn is a member of the department of history of the University

of Florida. Articles of his on Woodrow Wilson's early life have appeared recently in

other historical journals.

He wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Dean L. E. Grinter, chairman of

the University of Florida Research Fund, for a grant which made possible the

research for and writing of this article.

1 Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters (New York, 1927-39),

I, 129.