Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856-February 3, 1924)

Details

History of the Woodrow Wilson House

Woodrow Wilson Family Home
1705 Hampton Street

The Woodrow Wilson Family Home is the only house the Wilson family ever owned. When the family arrived in Columbia in 1870, they intended to make the city their permanent home. Thomas Woodrow Wilson spent his teenage years here, a period that had a profound influence on his political views.

Built in 1872, the Wilson Family Home is a cottage, in the Tuscan-villa style, after designs by the architect Andrew Jackson Downing. Characterized by arches and bay windows, reflecting the Victorian fascination with nature, the house has spacious, high-ceilinged rooms. Wilson's mother, Jessie Woodrow Wilson oversaw the building of the house and the designing of the gardens. She planted three of the magnolia trees in front of the house.

The Wilson family came to Columbia from Augusta, Georgia, in 1870 when Woodrow Wilson's father, Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, accepted a teaching position at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary. To supplement his income, he also acted as Stated Supply at the First Presbyterian Church. Young Tommy, as Woodrow Wilson was then called, was fourteen at the time.

Although the family built the house with the intention of staying in Columbia, a dispute in 1874 over obligatory chapel service between Dr. Wilson and students at the seminary forced Dr. Wilson to resign his position and accept the ministry of the Presbyterian church in Wilmington, North Carolina. After only two years in the house, the Wilsons left Columbia. However, they retained enduring ties to the city and returned for family occasions. Wilson's sister, Annie Josephine, married Dr. George Howe and lived in Columbia, and their parents are buried at First Presbyterian Church.

A grassroots movement in 1928 saved the house from demolition and it opened in 1932 as a museum.

The collections in the house are period from the 1850s - 1870s pieces; however, only a few belonged to the Wilson family. The most important object is the birth bed in which Wilson was born on December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia.