28. Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, in a Presbyterian manse located in Staunton, Virginia. His father, Joseph Wilson, was a Presbyterian minister who relocated his family from Staunton to Augusta, Georgia, when Woodrow Wilson was a year old. The family remained in Augusta through the Civil War and first years of Reconstruction before moving to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1870. The Wilsons supported the southern war effort, and Joseph Wilson’s church served as an army hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers. Although the turmoil of war surrounded Woodrow Wilson in his early years, his childhood was otherwise happy. Despite struggling with what appears to have been dyslexia, Wilson exhibited a precocious interest in education and politics. Wilson’s Greek-revival birth home in Staunton is now a museum and houses the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library.
--Andrew B. Leiter
The Manse where Wilson was born is unique among the birthplaces as the room where he was born has the original bed he was born in and original crib he slept in as an infant. Standing in the room, one can feel the years drop away, connecting you directly to history and the figures connected to it--a powerful feeling that has drawn me to this project from the beginning.