Wilson’s Wool

During World War I, as with other wars, people have had to find creative ways of reducing the costs of things to help save money. Some people, such as President Woodrow Wilson and his wife, Edith found a unique way to cut the cost of running one of the most expensive houses in the nation. It seems like a low-cost task, but in reality, mowing the White House lawn would very likely be a costly undertaking. President Wilson got the bright idea to basically “farm out” the mowing of the White House lawn.

President Wilson talked to his friend, Dr Cary T Grayson, about the idea of using sheep to keep the lawn in good shape. Grayson bought 12 sheep and four lambs from a farm in Bowie, Maryland at the request of the president. Over time, the flock grew to number 48. By having the flock of sheep grooming the lawn, it reduced the cost of cutting the grass and also, earned $52,823 for the Red Cross through an auction of their wool. The sheep were Shetland sheep. This is a breed normally kept for meat and its excellent wool.

Of course, President Wilson used other ways of cutting costs, but the sheep were one of those ways in which President Woodrow Wilson and his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson, showed fellow Americans that they were practicing rationing in support of the war effort too. In addition, according to The White House Historical Association, the White House also observed “wheatless Mondays” and “meatless Tuesdays,” the Wilsons sometimes rode in a horse-drawn carriage to save fuel, and Edith knit and sewed clothes for soldiers and volunteered with the Red Cross in the Union Station train hub.

While having the sheep groom the White House lawn was a noble idea, the White House lawn wasn’t actually an ideal home for the flock. Apparently, the ever-growing presence of cars in Washington, DC scared the sheep, causing them to get sick with pneumonia and something called “the dips.” in addition, the sheep went too far in their grass-trimming duties, actually tearing up the entire back lawn and necessitating a move to the front lawn where flowers and trees were fenced in to keep the sheep from devouring them too. The whole “experiment” got to be so problematic that after three years, the flock was sold off in August of 1920. While the “experiment” was a failure, it is nevertheless, a fact of history, and so has been preserved in the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum of Staunton, Virginia. In another tidbit of information, West Virginia engineer JP Brunschwyler bid on some wool as part of a group and saved in it a safety deposit box where it stayed for 100 years. His daughter Judith Donakowski inherited the wool and donated it to the museum in 2018.