Anne Elizabeth Bolling

Ann Elizabeth Bolling (Wigginton)

Find A Grave Memorial ID # 27212325

•Daughter of Benjamin Wigginton and Harriet Baugh Scott of Rose Cottage, Bedford County, Virginia.

•Wife of Dr. Archibald Bolling, a seventh direct descendant of Matoaka (Pocahantas) and the grandson of Mary (Jefferson) Bolling, US President Thomas Jefferson's older sister.

•Mother of John Blair Bolling, Harriette Wigginton Bolling, Mary Jefferson Bolling and Judge William Holcombe Bolling. Judge Bolling and Sallie Spiers White are the parents of US First Lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the second wife of US President Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

Anne Elizabeth's childhood home, a plantation known as Rose Cottage in Bedford Virginia, was lost following the Civil War. Anne Elizabeth's husband, Dr. Archibald Bolling, and her father, Benjamin Wigginton, both passed away in 1862 and 1864 respectively. Soon after, Judge Bolling relocated with family from Bedford to Wythe County, Virginia.

According to her memoir, First Lady Edith Bolling Wilson was the seventh of eleven children and struggled in school due to shyness. The decision was made for her to be educated at home by her paternal grandmother, Anne Elizabeth Wigginton Bolling, and her father, Judge Bolling. Edith describes Anne Elizabeth in the following passage:

"My Grandmother Bolling was also a very important factor in our lives. An unusually capable and dominant person, to whom an obstacle meant only something to be overcome, she used to say with scorn: "I hate a "can't"; anyone can do anything they try to." And she proved it. I wish I could give you the mental picture I have of her. She was small, very thin, and stooped, due to an injury to her spine, received when, as a very young woman, she was thrown from a horse. She always wore black dresses, made exactly alike: a very full skirt (six widths of material), over a small set of hoops; these were gathered at the waist line to a long, straight bodice, buttoned down the front. A very full bishop-sleeve, with cuffs matching the crepe collar fastened with a hair brooch in front, and a snowy white cap, completed her costume. She wore gold-rimed spectacles, and white aprons when she worked, and this was almost all the time for she had been brought up in the old school which believed literally that we had to account for every idle moment. She never relaxed her vigilance. When it grew too dark on winter afternoons for more exacting work, she would pick up her knitting, which was always near her, and through the darkness, or the fitful flames from the big wood fire that heated her room, you could hear the click of the steel needles as she knitted the finest silk or wool socks and stockings.... But this same lady was a distinct personality, and to her I owe a very loving debt of gratitude. She was as strong in her likes and dislikes as she was on every relation to life.... I can truly say she taught me nearly everything I know. She was never too sick or too tired or too busy to help me. From her I learned to read and write. She even tried to teach me French, which she had learned to read by herself. The Bible she knew from cover to cover, and we read it together morning and night. She taught me to knit, to sew, to embroider, hem stitch and crochet, and to cut and fit dresses."

--Wilson, Edith Bolling. "My Memoir". New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1938. pp. 4-6.

•Obituary

The News, Lynchburg, Va., Wednesday, March 9, 1898, p. 5, col. 1: DEATHS AT WYTHEVILLE. The Mother of Judge William H. Bolling and Miss May Buchanan Wytheville, Va., March 8.-- [Special.] The mother of Judge William H. Bolling died at his home here last night after a brief illness. She had reached the age of eighty-eight, and had retained until the last few years, her usual vigor of mind and charactor. She was Miss Anne Wiggington, of Bedford county. She came to Wytheville with her only son more than forty years ago being at the time already a widow. Judge Bolling and Mrs. J. R. Teusler of Richmond, Va. are her only surviving children.