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. He proposed marriage in September 1883; she accepted, but they agreed to postpone marriage while Wilson attended graduate school. Wilson's marriage to Ellen was complicated by traumatic developments in her family; in late 1883, Ellen's father Edward, suffering from depression, was admitted to the Georgia State Mental Hospital, where in 1884 he committed suicide.