Basic Facts:
Birth: November 19, 1831 at Orange, Ohio
Death: September 19, 1881 at Elberon, New Jersey
Married: Lucretia Rudolph (1832-1918) on November 11, 1858
Children: 7: Harry, James, Marv, Irvin, Abram, Elizabeth, Edward
President: One partial term beginning March 4, 1881
Family
Lucretia Rudolph met James A. Garfield in 1849. They married in 1858.
Lucretia (called “Crete”) studied the classics, and learned to speak Greek, Latin, French, and German. Additionally, she studied science, biology, math, history, and philosophy. She graduated from Hiram College (known as Western Reserve Eclectic Institute when she attended) and then became a teacher.
They would eventually have seven children together, five of whom lived to adulthood.
- Eliza Arabella “Trot” Garfield (1860–1863)
- Harry Augustus Garfield (1863–1942) – lawyer, educator, public official. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked him to run the nation’s United States Fuel Administration during World War I.
- James Rudolph Garfield (1865–1950) – lawyer, public official. He served as Secretary of the Interior during President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.
- Mary “Mollie” Garfield Stanley-Brown[4] (1867–1947). Educated at private schools in Cleveland and Connecticut, she in 1888 married Joseph Stanley Brown, presidential secretary during Garfield’s term, later an investment banker. She lived in New York and Pasadena, California.
- Irvin McDowell Garfield (1870–1951) – lawyer. He followed his older brothers to Williams College and Columbia Law School. He settled in Boston, where he prospered as partner in the firm of Warren & Garfield and served on the boards of directors of several corporations.
- Abram Garfield (1872–1958) – architect. A graduate of Williams College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he settled in Cleveland, where he worked as an architect from offices in the James A. Garfield Building. He served as chairman of the Cleveland Planning Commission 1929–1942 and was active in the American Institute of Architects.
- Edward Garfield (1874–1876)
Other
The last of seven presidents born in a log cabin, Garfield weighed 10 pounds at birth.
At the age of twenty-six, Garfield became president of Hiram College. At the time the school only had five faculty members.
Garfield was the first left-handed president of the United States.
James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other, at the same time.
He was the first president to campaign in two languages — English and German.
On election day, November 2, 1880, he was at the same time a member of the House, Senator-elect and President-elect.
His mother was the first president’s mother to attend her son’s inauguration.
Garfield also appointed four black men to his administration, including activist Frederick Douglass as recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia.
On July 2, 1881, a man named Charles J. Guiteau who had been denied a position as the ambassador to France shot President Garfield in the back. Guiteau said he shot Garfield “to unite the Republican Party and save the Republic.” Garfield ended up dying on September 19, 1881, of blood poisoning due to the unsanitary manner in which the physicians attended to his wounds. Guiteau was later hanged on June 30, 1882, after being convicted of murder.
Only two times in American history have there been three presidents in the same year. The first time was in 1841. The second was in 1881 when Rutherford Hayes relinquished the office to Garfield. When Garfield died later that year, Chester Arthur became president.
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Sources:
Internet Public Library
James A Garfield National Historic Site
Mental Floss.com
Republican Presidents.net
Greenman, Barbara. The Timeline History of U. S. Presidents and First Ladies. Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, California, 2009.