Ellen Axson Wilson with Daughters
During her short time as first lady, Ellen Louise Axson Wilson (1860–1914) used her position of influence to promote social welfare initiatives. She campaigned for women’s restrooms in civic buildings and supported child welfare laws. Despite her husband Woodrow Wilson’s efforts as president to segregate federal workplaces and institute Jim Crow laws throughout the country, she actively lobbied Congress for passage of the Alley Dwelling Bill, an effort to improve the living conditions of poor Black residents in the nation’s capital.
After President Wilson’s inauguration in 1913, the Wilson family spent the summer at an artist’s colony in Cornish, New Hampshire. Between breaks from her own painting practice, which focused on landscapes, Ellen Wilson posed for this painting with her three daughters, Margaret, Eleanor, and Jesse (left to right). The artist, American Impressionist Robert Vonnoh, was married to renowned sculptor Bessie Potter Vonnoh and was a family friend.
President Woodrow Wilson House, A Site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation