Chapter One

      William Griffith Wilson was born on November 26, 1895, in East Dorset, Vermont — in a room behind a bar. The bar was in the Wilson House, the village hotel run by the widow Wilson, who was Bill’s grandmother. Bill’s mother and father had come to live there after their marriage in 1894.

      Bill was born about 3:00 a.m. on a wintry morning. His birth was difficult. Emily, his mother, said, “When they brought you to me, you were cold and discolored and nearly dead, and so also was I, you from asphyxiation and I from painful lacerations and loss of blood, but I held you to me, close in my arms, and so we were both warmed and comforted — and so we both lived, but the memory of it all could not be clearer in my consciousness if it had been seared into my brain with a red-hot branding iron, for I was given no anesthetic while those huge instruments were clamped onto your head.’’

      During the early months of her pregnancy, Emily had written a poem, which she addressed to her mother and her sister Millie. She titled it “A Welcome Guest”:

      “When baby comes! The earth will smile / And with her wintry arts beguile / The frost sprites and the fairies blest, / All in pure snowy garments drest / To greet my guest. / When baby comes! Now fades from mind / All thought of self. The world grows kind, / Old wounds are healed, old wrongs forgot, / Sorrow and pain not, / Earth holds no blot. / When baby comes! Methinks I see / The winsome face that is to be, / And old-time doubts and haunting fears / Are lost in dreams of happier years / Smiles follow tears. / When baby comes! God make me good / And rich in grace of motherhood, / Make white this woman’s soul of mine / And meet for this great gift of Thine / In that glad time.”

      With an attention to detail that was characteristic of her, Emily recorded all her baby’s statistics: Bill weighed 6¾ pounds at birth. He gained rapidly: 26 pounds at six months, 32 pounds at one year. He walked at 15 months, and got his first tooth at ten months. He learned his letters and words quickly: “He finds G on his blocks and says, ‘That’s G. See his tail.’ Afterwards, he says, ‘It’s Q.’ We say, ‘No, it’s G.’ Then he says, ‘We’ll call it Q,’ with a very roguish twinkle in his eyes.’’

      Bill’s father, Gilman Barrows Wilson, was an immensely likable man, known as an excellent storyteller with a fine voice that got even better with a few drinks. “How jolly Gilly was,” said one of the old neighbors. “I remember how he’d always say, ‘Darn the little ones and damn the big ones.’” He managed a marble quarry near East Dorset, and he was so highly regarded as a leader that later, when he went off to work in British Columbia, a number of old East Dorset quarrymen pulled up stakes to follow him.

      During Bill’s early childhood, he had a fine companionship with his father, who would play ball in the yard with him every night. “On Sundays, we would rent a covered buggy, with a flat top with tassels all around,’’ Bill remembered. “We would drive about in some style and with a great deal of satisfaction.’’

      Gilman’s people, the Wilsons, were amiable and noted for their humanity: easygoing, tolerant people, who were also good managers and organizers. There is evidence of alcoholism in the family. Bill’s paternal grandfather had been a serious drinker who got religion at a revival meeting and never touched another drop. Gilman was “a pretty heavy drinker, but not an alcoholic.” But, said Bill, his father did get into more than one scrape because of liquor.

      His mother’s family were different. The Griffiths were teachers, lawyers, and judges. The Griffiths were hard-driving and strong-willed, with courage and fortitude. Emily had taught school before she married. She had intelligence, determination, ambition — and immense courage. She would later become successful in a profession, long before most career fields were open to women. But the Griffiths also had some difficulty forming close relationships with people outside their own family. “They were always highly respected, but scarcely dearly loved” was the way Bill put it.

      Although Bill never made any real effort to trace his roots — he was Scots-Irish on his father’s side and primarily Welsh on his mother’s — he believed himself to be a distant relative of Woodrow Wilson. “Thanks for your all-too-flattering comparison between me and cousin Woodrow!” he once wrote to a friend. “As a matter of fact, he is a fourth cousin, about once removed. Years ago, some member of the Wilson family — now so large as to be the leading name in the Chicago telephone book — visited my father and told him this. I guess there is a certain amount of resemblance, when one stops to think about it.” In fact, as an adult, he did have a facial and physical resemblance to President Wilson.

      Bill’s sister, Dorothy Brewster Wilson, born in 1898, researched their genealogy in order to qualify for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). When asked what her ancestor had done in that war, she answered that he led American troops at the Battle of Monmouth. But, she added with amusement, he was not a general, but a drummer boy.

      Bill’s mother, Emily Griffith Wilson, succeeded professionally long before most careers were open to women.

      Gilman Barrows Wilson, who came from an easygoing, tolerant family, was an affectionate companion for his young son.

      Dorothy remembered the East Dorset of her turn-of-thecentury childhood as a small village of “about 20 homes on two main streets with marble sidewalks and many beautiful trees, mostly sugar maples. There were two general stores, two marble mills, a cheese factory, a blacksmith shop, and a cobbler shop; also a public school and two churches.” Today, with a population of about 300, East Dorset has scarcely more than 50 houses. Tucked away in the Vermont Valley against the western slopes of the Green Mountains, Bill’s home village is one of a number of small hamlets that make up the township of Dorset.

      From his window, Bill could see Mount Aeolus rising above the town. Said Bill: “An early recollection is one of looking up and seeing that vast and mysterious mountain and wondering whether I would ever climb that high.’’ Named for the wind-god of Greek mythology, Mount Aeolus is known for the gusts that sweep around its summit and howl over the pits left by East Dorset’s now-defunct marble quarrying industry.

      Marble quarrying had died out in the area by the end of World War I, but it was still an active industry in Bill’s childhood. “My people always were operators of marble quarries, that is, on the Wilson side, and my father inherited the tradition,” Bill recalled. “l can remember, as a small boy, seeing him set off in a gig for the so-called north quarry, and it was out of this quarry that many noted memorials, I think Grant’s Tomb, perhaps the New York Public Library and other buildings in New York City were fashioned.” Dorset marble is white, with light blue-gray shadings.

      Bill

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