No. Cooper, for instance, covers the years 1899-1902 in just two pages, with no reference to either. He does mention that Wilson briefly visited T.R. at Oyster Bay in the summer of 1901, just a few months before McKinley’s assassination, but not a word about the inaugural ceremony or its aftermath.
What’s the significance of Wilson’s “alleged trip to Rosseau Falls, Ontario”?
Morris says (in a footnote) that Wilson was returning from Rosseau Falls when he stopped in Buffalo for the Kohlsaat-described visit. Unfortunately, he doesn’t give a source.
I’m not sure what he’d be doing in Rosseau Falls, either. Rosseau Falls is now part of the Township of Muskoka Lakes located in the District of Muskoka, in Central Ontario. Muskoka is next door to the District of Parry Sound, county seat of which is Parry Sound. That’s where I was born and raised.
Muskoka nowadays is a playground for rich Torontonians and GTA citizens, with several golf courses and fancy resort hotels. I’m not sure if it was like this in 1901 or not.
They used to regularly go up there for vacation. I can’t find the cite right now, but it’s well established.
Wouldn’t surprise me. Muskoka is kind of like the Hamptons or Cape Cod; a getaway area for rich city folk.
Since the thread is resurrected anyway I’ll mention some Woodrow Wilson trivia about his presence at the end of a presidential career. In May 1865 his family was living in Macon, Georgia where his father had sent them for safety during Sherman’s March. He remembered for the rest of his life seeing Jefferson Davis escorted down the street in chains and manacled legs to the train that would take him to prison. Some of the people in the city were cursing him and throwing garbage, others were crying and calling words of encouragement. The image stuck with him (perhaps because at that time Wilson, 8 1/2 years old, couldn’t yet read).
Cooper mentions the young Wilson seeing the captured Jefferson Davis, and I’ve read about that before, but not the varying reactions of the townsfolk. Interesting.
TR also had an interesting connection with the end of a presidential career. This picture shows Lincoln’s body being escorted down Broadway past the Roosevelt mansion. In the second story window you can just make out Theodore and his brother.
T.R. greatly admired Lincoln, and at his 1905 inauguration wore a ring (lent to him by a supporter) into which had been woven several strands of Lincoln’s hair.
Lincoln’s remains were exhumed, opened, viewed for the last time and then reinterred a month before McKinley was shot/TR became president. I wonder if either considered being there to sneak a peek. (He was described as in an excellent state of preservation due to the constant embalming in the weeks after his death, though his skin was a bronze color and some of the clothing and the flag had deteriorated.)
Just noticed a footnote in Nathan Miller’s Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (1992). On p. 355, Miller notes that Kohlsaat is the source for the oft-repeated story that McKinley’s kingmaker Marcus Hanna remarked, “Now look, that damned cowboy is President of the United States,” and adds:
There is some question about the accuracy of some of Kohlsaat’s recollections, however. For example, he also stated that Woodrow Wilson visited Roosevelt in Buffalo at the time of McKinley’s death. Wilson biographers make no mention of such a visit.
Just visited the Wilcox Mansion a few weeks ago and asked our guide the same question as in the OP. He said he knew that some historians believe that Wilson was in the room for T.R.'s swearing of the oath of office, but he hasn’t seen anything establishing that for certain.
I visit my mother in Arlington VA. about 3-4 time/year. I usually visit the Library of Congress to do research on a myriad of topics that are interesting to me. This one has been on my list, but just haven’t had the time the last two visits to give it attention. That should not be a problem the next time.
The answer is in some correspondence there, I’m sure. I’ll keep you up if I find it.
That’d be great - thanks, samclem!
Still no response from Vowell herself, incidentally.
Well, I finally took the time to look. But no results.
I can say that there are no papers in the LoC that will help solve the question. There may be papers in some other Library, but not likely to be found, except by accident.
Wilson and his wife went up to Ontario for the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September, as was there usual vacation. They traveled through Buffalo on the way up, and, I assume, back through Buffalo on the way home. I don’t think that they made a side trip to visit the funeral.
I think that, absent Sarah providing some info that only she knows, Wilson showed up the day after Teddy was sworn in.
Woodrow Wilson has a home in DC, which I have toured, maybe a phone call or a letter may be of help to EH?
The only President buried in DC and to live in DC outside the White House (excluding Madison in the Octagon).
Visitor Information
2340 S Street, NW
Washington, District of Columbia 20008
Phone: 202-387-4062
There are multiple thousands of Wilson’s letters in the LoC. Not just his, but his wife’s, etc. Unless there is a random letter somewhere which someome has about their trip home, it’s not ever gonna be discovered.
Thanks, everybody. I think Vowell’s assertion must remain, at least for now, “unconfirmed and unlikely.”
I remember reading something TR wrote on the 40th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination. This was in the children’s anthology Journeys Through Bookland and was published not long after Roosevelt had written it. IIRC, he described Lincoln as “probably one of the three or four greatest Republican presidents ever elected,” which seemed like faint praise (there had only been 8 Republicans in the White House at that point). It just seemed like an odd statement from a great admirer. I figured his legendary reputation hadn’t quite gelled yet at that point, but hearing about his disinterred-then-reinterred corpse makes me wonder.
Hmm. That does sound like faint praise indeed. From all I’ve read, Lincoln was revered in postwar Republican circles, and especially by T.R., almost from the moment of his death.