Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre

Jessie Woodrow Sayre ( Wilson; August 28, 1887 – January 15, 1933) was a political activist and a daughter of US President Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Louise Axson. She worked for women's suffrage, social issues, to promote her father's call for the creation of the League of Nations, and was significant in the Massachusetts Democratic Party during the 1920s.

Biography

Jessie Woodrow Wilson was born in Gainesville, Georgia, the second daughter of Woodrow and Ellen Axson Wilson. She was the middle sister of Margaret Woodrow Wilson and Eleanor Wilson McAdoo. She was educated privately in Princeton, New Jersey at Miss Fine's School and at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. Her fiancé, a 1911 graduate of Harvard Law School, was the son of Robert Sayre, builder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and organizer and general manager of the Bethlehem Iron Works.

On January 17, 1915, she gave birth in the White House to a son, Francis B. Sayre, Jr. (January 17, 1915 – October 3, 2008), who became a noted clergyman and was a social activist like his mother. The following year, a daughter, Eleanor Axson Sayre (March 26, 1916 – May 12, 2001), was born. In 1919 they were joined by Woodrow Wilson Sayre (February 22, 1919 – September 16, 2002).

Massachusetts and Siam After World War I, the Sayres moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Francis accepted a position on the Harvard Law School faculty.

In 1928, she made the introductory speech for presidential nominee Al Smith at the Democratic National Convention. However, she declined. She became secretary of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee instead. while others state that she had undergone an emergency appendectomy.

She is buried in Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.