James A. Garfield National Historic Site

While in the Cleveland-Akron area in mid-September, 2012, we decided to visit the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio.  The site is only a small portion of the farm once owned by President Garfield, but it includes his house and several out buildings.  

Garfield was born in a log cabin in 1831 on the Ohio frontier.  He was the youngest of five children born to Abram Garfield and Eliza Ballou Garfield.  When he was only 17 months old, his father died.  At age 16, he left home to become a seaman and got a job as a mule driver on the Ohio & Erie Canal.  Because he did not know how to swim, he nearly drowned when he fell into the canal and returned home to recuperate after only a few weeks.  After recovering, he enrolled in the Geauga Seminary in Chester, Ohio, where he worked as a bell-ringer, janitor and carpenter to pay his tuition.  In 1849, he accepted an unsought position as a teacher.  During this time, he was also a circuit preacher.  He later attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (now Hiram College) in Hiram, Ohio, from 1851 to 1854 and then Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts where he graduated in 1856.  After a short career as a preacher, Garfield was offered a teaching position in classical languages at Western Reserve Eclectic Institute for the 1856-1857 and became what we would consider president of the college the next year.  In 1858, he married Lucretia Rudolph whom he had met as a fellow student at Geauga Seminary.  

The Republican party nominated Garfield for the 26th state senate seat in 1859 and he won the general election.  A self-taught lawyer, he passed the Ohio bar in 1861.  In the summer of 1861, he was commissioned a Lt Colonel in the United States Army and rose to the rank of Major General before resigning his commission in 1862 to serve as the representative of the 19th Ohio district in the US Congress.  He served nine terms in the House of Representatives.  In 1876, he bought the farm that was later given the nickname "Lawnfield" by reporters covering his presidential campaign.  He added several rooms to the house to accommodate his large family.  In 1879, the Republicans regained control of the Ohio legislature and elected Garfield to be a US Senator.  

At the Republican convention in 1880, there was a deadlock between Ulysses S Grant and John Sherman.  Over his objections, Garfield was nominated as a compromise candidate.  From the front porch of his house, he spoke to around seventeen thousand people during the summer presidential campaign of 1880.  He only made one campaign trip and that was to reconcile factions after the convention.  He won the popular vote by just over 7,000 votes out of nearly nine million cast, but won the electoral college by 214 to 155 over another Union Army general,  Winfield Hancock.  He is the only person to have simultaneously been a sitting Congressman, Senator-elect and President-elect.  Early American politicians did not campaign for office, but rather relied on surrogates to campaign for them.  The campaign of 1880 was unique in that throngs of people descended on Lawnfield to hear speeches delivered by the candidate.  

President Garfield was inaugurated on March 4, 1881.  Only four months later on July 2, 1881, he was shot twice by Charles J. Guiteau.  He lingered for 80 days until he died on September 19, 1881.  After his funeral, his family returned to Lawnfield.  New York financier Cyrus Field began a fundraising effort that provided Lucretia a sum of $350,000.  She used $30,000 of the money to build a massive addition onto the house to house the president's books and papers, effectively creating the first Presidential Library.

The history of the family and of the house are conveyed during scheduled guided tours of the house.  By using some surviving photographs and drawings, the house has been restored to roughly the condition it might have been in the 1890s.  No flash photography is allowed inside the house, so you'll have to schedule your own visit in order to see all the details.

West side after library addition

Front Porch

East side

Summer (downstairs) bedroom

Mother Eliza's room

Dining room

Summer bedroom tucked behind foyer staircase

Library addition

A few of the President's many books

Reading nook

Ceremonial desk in library

Fireproof vault behind false doors in library

Vault where the President's papers were stored

Funeral wreath from Queen Victoria

More books and woodwork

Besides the library, several additional bedrooms were added on the second floor of the addition.

Memorial including class reunion cameos

Outside, a 60 foot windmill tower was constructed to pump water and store it for later use in the main house.

The campaign office was only a few steps out the back door

Interior of the campaign office

Behind the main house, the carriage house has been converted into a visitor center and offices for park service staff.  The park has an entrance fee of $5 per person.

The park website is http://www.nps.gov/jaga/index.htm.