Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born to a Scots-Irish family in Staunton, Virginia, on December 28, 1856. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born to a Scots-Irish family in Staunton, Virginia, on December 28, 1856. He was the third of four children and the first son of Joseph Ruggles Wilson (1822–1903) and Jessie Janet Woodrow (1826–1888), growing up in a home where slave labour was utilised. Wilson's paternal grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland in 1807, settling in Steubenville, Ohio. His grandfather James Wilson published a pro-tariff and anti-slavery newspaper, The Western Herald and Gazette.