• Location: on the comfy loveseat with Abby
• Mood: geeky
• Music: Julie Andrews-"Feed the Birds"

Summer White Houses: Woodrow Wilson's Harlakenden House

During the summers of 1913 to 1915, Woodrow Wilson and his family spent their vacations at a home located in Cornish, New Hampshire, known as Harlakenden House. Wilson selected the house in 1913 so that his first wife Ellen Wilson could focus on her talent as a landscape painter. At the time, Cornish was home to many reclusive artists who formed a sort of colony there. These artists included illustrator Maxfield Parrish, and sculptors Augustus Saint Gaudens and Daniel Chester French. The community was composed of a number of famous and non-so-famous painters, etchers, architects, illustrators, decorators, landscape designers, poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists, journalists, composers, actors, singers, and musicians. It was the spot to be for the artistically inclined in the early part of the 20th century.



President and Mrs. Wilson, and their daughters leased the large home, which belonged to best-selling novelist Winston Churchill (no relation to the famous British statesman and leader). While the Wilson's lived there, Harlakenden House was dubbed “The Summer White House” by the press.

While the first lady worked on her skills as an artist, the Wilsons' daughter Margaret practicing and worked on improving her musical talents. Margaret sang and made several recordings. While at Harkenden House, Margaret also worked to increase public awareness and support for one of the nation’s first sanctuaries for wild birds, located near Cornish. The sanctuary had been established three years earlier by the local Meriden Bird Club. It was named the Helen Woodruff Smith Bird Sanctuary and it sought to provide natural habitats for migratory bird. In August of 1913, shortly after Margaret Wilson expressed interest in supporting the club, its manager, the naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes commissioned poet Percy MacKaye to compose a ballad as a performance art piece to be staged one month later. The performance was intended to bring public attention to the threatened heron and egret birds.

MacKaye decided to use Margaret Wilson’s vocal skills as well as her sister Nell’s dancing ability. Both of the two First Daughters were cast in the production. Margaret and Nell Wilson joined the cast in performing Sanctuary on September 12, 1913 in front of a select audience of about sixty. President Woodrow Wilson and his wife Ellen were also in attendance. Their presence helped attract national press attention, not only for the performance, but for the cause for which it sought to raise public awareness. Whether she tried to directly influence her father the President is uncertain, but five years later, her father signed the national legislation which enacted the protective Migratory Bird Act.

In the performance, Margaret Wilson performed as a “spirit voice,” singing from behind shrubbery while her sister Nell, in a bird mask, acted out as a Bird Spirit being pursued by a hunter. To commemorate the event and raise further more funds, the sculptor Marie Saint-Gaudens crafted large Grecian urns with the figures of Margaret Wilson and the other performers carved into a decorative pose.A limited edition of these were manufactured and sold to the public to raise further funds for the bird sanctuary.



Wilson's second term was preoccupied with the Great War and later hampered by his health issues. Ellen Wilson died on August 6, 1914. Woodrow Wilson remarried in December of 1915, but he and his second wife Edith never returned to Harlakenden House. The home was destroyed in a fire in 1923.