Index of Cumberland County Birth, Wedding, Divorce & Obituary Newspaper Records - 2003
This index runs from January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2003.
Vance McCormick's Relationship with Woodrow Wilson: A View Through Their Correspondence
A collection of correspondence and memorabilia belonging to Vance Criswell McCormick rests in the archives of the Historical Society of Dauphin County. A part of the sixth generation of a Cumberland County family, he was born in Silver Spring Township in 1872. His family had settled along the Conodoguinet Creek before 1736. He wintered in Harrisburg and summered first at Rose Garden, Upper Allen Township, and later until his death in 1945 at the home of his wife, "Cedar Cliff," in Lower Allen Township.
Most of the communications printed below were exchanged between McCormick and President Woodrow Wilson or between McConnick and Edith Bolling Wilson, the President's second wife. The rest of these documents were originated by Annie Criswell McCormick, (Vance's mother), or Helen Woodrow Bones or John Randolph Bolling, people serving as personal secretaries to the Wilsons.
It undoubtedly does not represent all of the personal notes, letters, and telegrams exchanged between the McCormicks and the Wilsons. As incomplete as the collection may be, it is nevertheless revealing of the loyal and devoted relationship that McCormick had with the Wilsons and the newsy and friendly manner in which they communicated with one another. Generally, most correspondence between individuals, even prominent ones, is relatively mundane. While many of these thirty documents are no exception to that generalization, they reflect throughout a close relationship characterized by warmth and affection between the McCormicks and the President and Mrs. Wilson. Moreover, with all their mention of tea and flowers, they show the sentimental, genteel traditions of the time, which is still another reason for presenting the documents here.
Woodrow Wilson is the best-known of the three. During his first term his wife Ellen Louise Axson Wilson died. Quickly thereafter in 1915 he courted and married Edith Bolling Galt., an attractive Washington widow. Paralyzed by a stroke on October 3, 1919, he was forced to give the responsibility for most of the correspondence to Edith. He died February 3, 1924.1
Edith Bolling Wilson became the second Mrs. Wilson through a chain of events that began shortly after Ellen Wilson's death on August 14, 1914. President Wilson blamed his own ambition and his career for Ellen's demise. This only served to intensify his feelings of despondency and loneliness in the White House. For a while, some of Ellen's relatives stayed with the President. When they left, Wilson asked his cousin, Helen Woodrow Bones, to come and live at the White House and to take charge of things. As the months went by from the summer of 1914 to the spring of 1915, Dr. Caty Grayson, the President's personal physician, watched his patient's health decline. He also began to worry about Helen Bones, who also was becoming sick in the depressing atmosphere of the White House.
Observing that Helen was shy and had few friends in Washington, Grayson decided that Helen needed a female friend to talk to, someone who would take her out. of the White House from time to time. Dr. Grayson introduced Helen to an older friend of his fiancee, Alice Gertrude Gordon. Alice's friend, Edith Bolling Galt, was a forty-two-year-old widow who owned a Washington jewelry shop.