Margaret Woodrow Wilson was the eldest child of President Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Louise Axson. Her two siblings were Jessie and Eleanor. After her mother's death in 1914, Margaret served her father as the White House social hostess, the title later known as first lady. Her father remarried in 1915.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I in 1917. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his progressive stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.