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An American Cinderella Story
In March of 1915, President Woodrow Wilson and Edith Bolling Galt met by chance, and a whirlwind romance engulfed them both. They married eight months later on December 18, 1915. President Wilson described Edith's friendship and love as a "gift from heaven."
Edith Bolling was born in 1872 in Wytheville, Virginia. Her family traced its heritage to Virginia's Jamestown colonists. Edith's parents had been raised before the Civil War on Virginia plantations that relied on enslaved workers. The Bolling family lost most of its wealth and property in the Civil War. Her parents relocated to Wytheville, where her father was a lawyer and then a judge. The extended family lived on the second floor of a building on Main Street, the first floor rented out as a general store. Edith was the seventh of eleven children. She received little formal education, but was tutored by a grandmother, for whom Edith was a caregiver.
At the age of twenty-three in 1896, Edith married Norman Galt, a jeweler in Washington DC. Edith met Norman while visiting her sister in Washington who married Norman's cousin. Edith and Norman were married for twelve years and had no children. Norman Galt died in 1908, leaving Edith his business, Galt's Jewelry, the preeminent jewelry store in Washington. Edith engaged a manager to run the jewelry store day-to-day.
As a wealthy widow in Washington DC, Edith had independence and financial means available to few women in that society. She was socially active and knew Helen Bones, Woodrow Wilson's cousin. Through that connection she met the President by chance one day in the White House after his golf game was rained out. Thus began her Cinderella story. |