Presidential Biographies | Wilson Administrations - Early Life

Early Life

Wilson was born five years before the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861–65) in the Shenandoah Valley town of Staunton, Virginia. His family was deeply religious. Wilson's father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was a Presbyterian minister and later a seminary professor. His mother, Jessie Janet Woodrow Wilson, was of Scottish descent. Because of Pastor Wilson's duties, the family moved frequently. When young "Tommy," as he was known as a child, was just two, they moved to Augusta, Georgia. Later, they went to Columbia, South Carolina.

The family was fortunate in that no family member actually had to fight during the war, although the Wilson home and church did sometimes serve as a camping ground for Confederate, or southern, soldiers. Nevertheless, the war made a deep impression on young Wilson. Later, he viewed the war as a dividing line, one after which the original constitutional structure of the nation's...