Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre

Jessie Woodrow Sayre (née Wilson) was born on August 28, 1887, in Gainesville, Georgia. She was the second daughter of Woodrow Wilson, who later became the President of the United States, and Ellen Louise Axson. She had two sisters: Margaret Woodrow Wilson and Eleanor Wilson McAdoo.

Her education included private schooling in Princeton, New Jersey, at Miss Fine's School, followed by attendance at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. At Goucher College, she was a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. After graduating from Goucher, she spent three years working at a settlement home in Philadelphia.

In July 1913, four months after her father assumed the presidency, Jessie Wilson became engaged to Francis Bowes Sayre, Sr., a 1911 graduate of Harvard Law School. Francis Sayre was the son of Robert Sayre, who was involved in the construction of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and served as the organizer and general manager of Bethlehem Iron Works. At the time of their engagement, Sayre was working in the office of a district attorney.

Jessie Wilson and Francis Sayre married on November 25, 1913, in a ceremony at the White House. Their wedding was the thirteenth White House wedding and the first since Alice Roosevelt's marriage in 1906. Following their wedding, they traveled to Europe on their honeymoon. Upon returning, they moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Francis Sayre took a position as an assistant to the president of Williams College.

The couple had three children: a son, Francis B. Sayre, Jr., born on January 17, 1915; a daughter, Eleanor Axson Sayre, born on March 26, 1916; and another son, Woodrow Wilson Sayre, born in 1919. Jessie Wilson Sayre gave birth to her first child in the White House, making her the daughter of a sitting U.S. president at the time.

After World War I, the Sayre family relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Francis Sayre joined the faculty at Harvard Law School. During this period, Jessie was active in supporting the Democratic Party, the League of Nations, and the League of Women Voters. She also served on the national board of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA).

Following the death of Woodrow Wilson in 1924, Jessie and her family were residing in Siam (modern-day Thailand), where Francis Sayre was working as an advisor on international law at the Royal Court of Siam. In 1928, she delivered the introductory speech on behalf of presidential nominee Al Smith at the Democratic National Convention.

In 1929, her name was considered as a potential candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat then held by Republican Frederick H. Gillett. However, she declined to run and instead became the secretary of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee.

Jessie Woodrow Sayre died on January 15, 1933, at the age of 45. Her death followed abdominal surgery at Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts. There are differing reports regarding her cause of death; some sources mention a gall bladder disorder, while others indicate she had an emergency appendectomy. Two years after her death, the Boston branch of the Women's Democratic League was renamed the Jessie Woodrow Sayre Women's Democratic League. She was interred at Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.