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Margaret Woodrow Wilson
When Ellen Wilson died in 1914, two years into Wilson's presidency, Margaret Wilson served as First Lady of the United States until Wilson's second marriage in 1915 to Edith Bolling Galt. Margaret was an accomplished singer who made several recordings around 1918. She never married.
When her father died, he left her an annuity of $2500 a year. After her father's death she developed an interest in far-eastern religion. In 1940, she travelled to the ashram of Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry, India, and she remained there for the rest of her life. She became known in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as Nistha, a name given to her by the holy man Sri Aurobindo after she became a member of the Ashram. Nistha is the Sanskrit word for "sincerity." While there, she and scholar Joseph Campbell edited the English translation of the classical work on the Hindu mystic, Sri Ramakrishna, entitled The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nikhilananda. Their work was published in 1942, by Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York. Margaret Wilson died at the Ashram on February 12, 1944, from uremia.
Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre
Jessie Woodrow Wilson was educated privately in Princeton, New Jersey and later attended Goucher College in Baltimore. After her graduation from Goucher, she worked at a settlement home in Philadelphia for three years. In July 1913, four months after her father assumed the presidency, the Wilsons announced Jessie's engagement to Francis Bowes Sayre, Sr. Her fiance was a 1911 graduate of Harvard Law School and the son of Robert Sayre, builder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, as well as general manager of the Bethlehem Iron Works. At the time of their engagement he was serving in the office of the district attorney. Their November 25, 1913 wedding held at the White House.
When they returned home from their honeymoon in Europe, they moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Francis Sayre began working as an assistant to the president of Williams College. On January 17, 1915, she gave birth in the White House to a son, Francis B. Sayre, Jr. who became a clergyman and a social activist like his mother. The following year on March 26, she gave birth to a daughter, Eleanor Axson Sayre. Their last child, Woodrow Wilson Sayre, was born on February 22, 1919.
After World War I, the Sayres moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Francis accepted a position on the Harvard Law School faculty. There, Jessie worked for a number of causes, including the Democratic Party, the League of Nations, and the League of Women Voters. She also served on the national board of directors of the YWCA. When Woodrow Wilson died in 1924, the couple was living in Siam (now Thailand) where Francis was working as an advisor on international law at the Royal Court of Siam.
In 1928, she made the introductory speech for presidential nominee Al Smith at the Democratic National Convention. Her name was mentioned as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for United States Senator, but she declined the offer. She became secretary of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee instead.
Jessie Sayre died at age 45, after undergoing abdominal surgery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is buried in Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Eleanor Wilson McAdoo
Wilson's youngest daughter Eleanor, married Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, a man 26 years her senior. The couple were married at the White House on May 7, 1914. They had a daughter Ellen Wilson McAdoo in 1915 and a second daughter, Mary Faith McAdoo, born in 1920. The couple divorced in 1934.
Eleanor wrote a biography about her father, and she served as a consultant on the 1944 biopic Wilson. In 1965, she became largely incapacitated after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. She died on April 5, 1967 at her home in Montecito, California. She was 77 years of age. She was interred at the Santa Barbara Cemetery in Santa Barbara, California.