Thomas Nelson Page was an American attorney, politician, and writer. During World War I, he was the United States' ambassador to Italy from 1913 to 1919, serving under President Woodrow Wilson. Page's writing popularized Plantation tradition literature, which was utilized to spread the Lost Cause idea throughout the New South. Page originally captured the public's notice with his story "Marse Chan," which appeared in the Century Illustrated Monthly magazine. Page's most notable pieces are The Burial of the Guns and In Ole Virginia. Page was born on one of the Nelson family's properties in Oakland, near the community of Beaverdam, Hanover County, Virginia. He was the son of John Page (a lawyer and plantation owner) and Elizabeth Burwell (Nelson). He descended from the well-known Nelson and Page families, both of whom were First Families of Virginia. Although he came from an affluent family, during the American Civil War, which began when he was eight years old, his parents and relatives were largely poor during Reconstruction and his adolescence. In 1869, he enrolled in Washington College, now known as Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia, where Robert E. Lee was president.