Margaret Woodrow Wilson (1886 - 1944)

Born 16 Apr 1886 in Gainesville, Georgia

Ancestors

Died 12 Feb 1944 at age 57 in Pondicherry, India

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Biography

Margaret Woodrow Wilson (April 16, 1886, Gainesville, Georgia – February 12, 1944, Pondicherry, India) was the daughter of President Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Louise Axson. Wilson had two sisters, Jessie W. Wilson and Eleanor R. Wilson. After her mother's death in 1914 she served as the First Lady of the United States until Woodrow's second marriage in 1915.

Wilson sang and made several recordings around 1918. In 1938 she travelled to the ashram of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, India where she chose to stay for the rest of her life; 6 years later she died there from a kidney infection. She was later known in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as 'Nistha'. Sri Aurobindo gave her this name after she became a member of the Ashram; the word is Sanskrit for "sincerity." She and scholar Joseph Campbell edited the English translation of the classical work on the Hindu mystic, Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nikhilananda, which was published in 1942, by Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York. In her father's last will, he left her an annuity of $2500 annually as long as that amount did not exceed one-third of the annual income of his estate.

Margaret Wilson was Born in Gainesville, Georgia, She was the Daughter of President Woodrow Wilson And his first wife Ellen Axson Wilson! She never married, She was brifly the White House hostess after the death of the mother until Her father remarried in 1915.Margaret attended Goucher College in Baltimore, and trained in voice and piano at the Peabody Institute of Music. The soprano debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Syracuse in 1915 and performed at camps and benefits for the Red Cross all during World War I. Wilson retired from singing in 1923 to work at an advertising agency. In later years, she turned to Indian mysticism. She died of uremia in a religious community in India at the age In 1938 Margaret Woodrow Wilson joined a spiritual community, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in South India, and sat at the feet of her spiritual Master, Sri Aurobindo. She declared, "Here is one on earth whom one can love all one's life and in whom one can lose oneself." She received the name Nishtha from her master. He wrote this about it: "Nishtha means one pointed, fixed and steady concentration, devotion and faith in the single aim -the Divine and the Divine Realisation" (November 5, 1938). Both father and daughter embodied faith, the divine quality, in full measure- the father in humanity's cause, the daughter in divinity's cause. Once when a physical ailment of hers tended to be serious and it was suggested to her to return to America and consult her family doctor, she flatly refused, saying, "They can take care of my body, but who will take care of my soul?" Margaret Woodrow Wilson passed away on February 12 1944. Her tombstone in the cemetery of Pondicherry, the small town in South India that is the home of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, bears the simple inscription: "Ci-git la dépouille mortelle de Nishtha, Margaret Woodrow Wilson, 16 avril 1886-12 février 1944." died in Pondicherry, India from uremia.

Sources

• Nikhilananda, Swami (1942). "Preface". The Gospel of Ramakrishna. Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math.
• Wills of the U.S. Presidents, edited by Herbert R Collins and David B Weaver (New York: Communication Channels Inc., 1976) p. 176, ISBN 0-916164-01-2
• Find A Grave: Memorial #17995286
• Wikipedia:Margaret_Woodrow_Wilson
• Google: Margaret Woodrow Wilson