CLASS NEWS LEADING LADIES OF SAINT MARY'S Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, Class of 1908 October 16, 1889 – April 5, 1967 As the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, the students of Saint Mary’s used their direct connection to the Oval Office to express their support to the president. That connection was Saint Mary’s alumna Eleanor “Nell” Randolph Wilson McAdoo, Class of 1908, youngest daughter of Ellen Axson Wilson and President Woodrow Wilson, who had been a professor at Princeton University during Nell’s Saint Mary’s years. Three days before the U.S. declared war and World War I began in earnest, Dr. George William Lay, fifth rector/ head of Saint Mary’s, addressed the student body at a special meeting after dinner about the burden of responsibility on the president, asking the girls, “What shall we do to show our sympathy and loyalty to him?” Three hours later, the girls gathered after study hall, as Senior Class President Alice Latham read a correspondence, signed by all of the class presidents and addressed to Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, expressing a unanimous resolution from the student body “to extend to our President our wholehearted sympathy for him in this crisis and to pledge to him and to our country our loyal service.” Nell wrote back to Saint Mary’s, “Have not had an opportunity until today to show your splendid telegram to my father. He has asked me to send you his deep appreciation and warm thanks for your message, and to say that such a pledge of faith and service does much to cheer and encourage him. I send my thanks and my love to my school.” Nell had entered Saint Mary’s in the fall of 1906, in large part due to her mother’s lifelong friendship with Ro-
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salie DuBose, wife of the Rev. McNeely DuBose, fourth rector/head of Saint Mary’s School. Like many Saint Mary’s girls, Nell initially and unhappily found the rules “abominable,” but was soon writing letters home to her sisters filled with descriptions of “perfectly glorious” times. At Saint Mary’s, Nell acted in The Muse Club plays and was voted the most intellectual girl in her class. Her father wanted his daughter to study Greek at Saint Mary’s, which bolstered her scholarly aura. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Psi sorority, an intersociety debater for Sigma Lambda, and an editor of The Muse. Nell was among a number of young women who had begun writing for The Muse Club - including Elizabeth Lay, Martha Byrd Spruill, Jane Toy, Mary Yellott, Irma Deaton, Nell Battle Lewis, Elizabeth Gold and others – who became published authors and journalists later in life. She was also founder of the Riding Club, and a member of the Sketch Club, basketball team, and tennis club. Nell married Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo at the White House on May 7, 1914. They had a daughter, Ellen Wilson McAdoo (1915–1946), and a second daughter, Mary Faith McAdoo (1920–1988). Nell divorced McAdoo in 1934. Living in Washington, D.C., she served as national head of the Women’s Liberty Loan Committees and head of Washington’s largest Red Cross auxiliary, composed of 4,400 women of the treasury department. She wrote a book about her father and family, The Woodrow Wilsons, which is available on Amazon, and served as an informal counselor on the 1944 biopic Wilson. She edited a book, The Priceless Gift - The Love Letters of Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Axson Wilson.
She served Saint Mary’s as the national chair of the advisory committee for a major capital campaign during the administration of the Rev. Warren Wade Way, sixth rector/head of Saint Mary’s. She was Saint Mary’s commencement speaker in 1954. She died at her home in Montecito, California, at 77. She was interred at the Santa Barbara Cemetery, Santa Barbara, Calif. Mary Virginia Swain ’77C Sources: The Heritage: The Education of Women at St. Mary’s College, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1842-1982, by Martha Sprouse Stoops Life at Saint Mary’s, The University of North Carolina Press, 1942 Wikiwand.com
Eleanor Wilson ’08, third from left, with her family, including her father, Woodrow Wilson, standing