Presidents and First Ladies Trivia

[L Verge]

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, second wife of President Woodrow Wilson, was a 9th generation descendant of Pocahontas. Nancy Reagan also claimed Pocahontas on her family tree. Congratulations to Steve and Eva.

I also found mention that Edith's great-great grandmother was a sister to Thomas Jefferson, but I also found a line that descended from Martha Custis Washington down through Robert E. Lee. With a tree like that, enriched by the Bolling and Galt names, no wonder Edith felt she had the ability to govern behind the scenes during Woodrow's final illness!

In searching this, I also found a cute quip related to the above topic about First Ladies and their clothing costs: "As far as the slight derision the press suggested about her sense of fashion style, Ellen Wilson [the first wife of Wilson who waws First Lady for only about a year] cared little. Bragging that she spent less than one thousand dollars a year on clothes, one newspaper columnist added sarcastically,'and she looks it.'” Seems the cruel press never changes.

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Just one thing more on the Pocahontas line: There are said to be over 100,000 descendants of Pocahontas alive today. In the last century, some others have included a veritable Who’s Who:Nathaniel Hawthorne, Clement Moore, Robert Penn Warren, Emily Dickinson, Walt Disney, John Wayne, Amelia Earhart, Laura Ingalls, Jane Austen, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Norman Rockwell, Laurence Olivier, Henry David Thoreau, Presidents George H. and George W. Bush, William Henry and Benjamin Harrison, Nixon, Ford and First Ladies Edith Roosevelt, Nancy Reagan, Bess Truman, Frances Cleveland, Jane Pierce.

There were also numerous self-identified African-Americans with the surname of Bolling who achieved great prominence in American life, the most famous of which is perhaps Booker T. Washington.

For a woman who died at age 22, Pocahontas did a good job of assuring her line!