Cora Lily Woodard Aycock

Cora Lily Woodard Aycock (October 11, 1868 – March 13, 1952) was an American political hostess, farmer, and railway executive. As the second wife of Governor Charles Brantley Aycock, she served as First Lady of North Carolina from 1901 to 1905. While her husband was an outspoken white supremacist and segregationist, she was known to be rather apolitical but staunchly supported her husband's educational reforms for public schools. Aycock spent her time as first lady entertaining guests at small gatherings at the North Carolina Executive Mansion, raising her seven children and two surviving stepchildren, and instructing her children in music. Aycock was the first North Carolinian first lady to give birth at the executive mansion.

After her husband's death in 1912 left her without much of an estate, Aycock made a modest income by selling tobacco from her farm in Wilson County and selling extra milk and produce from her 1-acre lot in Raleigh. She worked with her son-in-law, the writer Clarence Hamilton Poe, to publish The Life and Speeches of Charles B. Aycock. In the 1930s, she was appointed as the President of the North Carolina Railroad by Governor John C. B. Ehringhaus.

Early life and education Aycock was born Cora Lily Woodard on October 11, 1868, in Wilson, North Carolina to Elder William Woodard, a Primitive Baptist lay preacher and farmer, and Delphia Rountree Woodard. Upon moving into the North Carolina Executive Mansion in 1901, Aycock found that the governor's annual salary of $3,000 was not enough to cover the elaborate entertaining expected from a first lady. She spent her time at the mansion cutting costs and budgeting for social events. She became the stepmother of her sister's three children, Ernest Aycock, Charles Brantley Aycock Jr., and Alice Varina Aycock.

The Aycock family was of modest means and they left public office in debt, largely in part because of personal expenses associated with being the state's first family. in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her funeral, held at her daughter's house in Lakewood Gardens, was officiated by a minister from Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. Aycock was buried beside her husband in Historic Oakwood Cemetery.