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The Boyhood Home
of President
Woodrow Wilson
President Woodrow Wilson’s earliest When the Confederacy commandeered
memory was of hearing a passerby the church as a hospital, Tommy
near his childhood home in Augusta saw, heard, and even smelled the
say that Mr. Lincoln had been elected wounded soldiers, many of whom
President and there would be a were treated in the churchyard. This
war. The four-year-old, then called left him with a visceral understanding
Tommy, ran to ask his father what of the human toll war takes.
it meant.
In 1870 the family relocated to
His father, Rev. Joseph Ruggles Columbia, S.C., but fourteen-
Wilson, had moved the family to year-old Tommy took with him the
Augusta in 1858, when Tommy was values, beliefs and skills he had
one. They occupied a stately 10-room learned in Augusta.
manse on what is now 7th Street.
As president, Woodrow Wilson
That home has been restored by struggled unsuccessfully to keep
Historic Augusta and is now a house the United States out of World War
museum and National Historic I and forged the League of Nations
Landmark known as The Boyhood to prevent future wars, in large part
Home of President Woodrow Wilson. because of the carnage he saw during
the Civil War.
From its windows, you’ll see the
church where Rev. Wilson preached. The roles he played, from president
The original Medical College of of the United States to educator to
Georgia, then the state’s only Nobel Prize winner, were all deeply
teaching hospital, sat a few doors influenced by his years in The Boyhood
down. The Georgia Railroad whistled Home of President Woodrow Wilson in
along tracks on 8th Street a block away. Civil War-era Augusta, Ga.
The Boyhood Home of President Woodrow Wilson
419 7th Street 706.722.9828 WilsonBoyhoodHome.org
