OHIO STATEWIDE FILES  OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List Issue 287
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OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest				Volume 00 : Issue 287

Today's Topics:
  #1 Bio - 1885 - Portage Co, OH, Garfi   [Betty Ralph <bralph@HiWAAY.net>]

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X-Message: #1
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 09:16:42 -0500
From: Betty Ralph <bralph@HiWAAY.net>
To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com
Message-Id: <2.2.32.20000928141642.0073847c@HiWAAY.net>
Subject: Bio - 1885 - Portage Co, OH, Garfield
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Bio: Garfield - Portage County, Ohio, from "History of Portage County, Ohio"
published by Warner, Beers & Co., Chicago, 1885

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persons.  Persons or organizations desiring to use this material,
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representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb
archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission
to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access.

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JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, twentieth President of the United States, was born
November 19, 1831, in Orange, Cuyahoga Co., Ohio, son of Abram and Eliza
(Ballou) Garfield, latter a native of New Hampshire, a relative of the
celebrated Hosea Ballou.  The genealogy of the Garfield family traces back
to 1587, in which year a tract of land on the borders of Wales, near
Chester, England, and not far from the celebrated picturesque vale of
Llangollen, was given to James Garfield (or Gearfeldt) through the influence
of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.  The Gearfeldts were probably
descendants of the old Knights of Gearfili Castle, whose prowess in arms and
deeds of chivalry are frequently made mention of in English history.  Their
chest consisted of a helmet with the visor raised and an uplifted arm
holding a drawn sword, and their motto was "In cruce vinco" (In, or under,
the cross I conquer).  In 1630 Edward Gearfield, of Chester, England, and
who was born in 1575, came to America in a company of colonists, and from
him, in a direct line, comes James A. Garfield.

Abram Garfield, father of our subject, born December 28, 1799, at Worcester,
Otesgo Co., N.Y., and who was one of the first settlers of the township of
Orange, died in 1833, leaving a young family of four children, of whom James
A. was the youngest, being at the time of his father's death only a year and
a half old.  The family were poor and were kept together only by the
industry, energy and courage of the widowed mother.  Young Garfield received
a common school education while working on his mother's farm, and at the age
of fourteen learned the carpenter's trade, while, two years later, he served
for a few months as a boatman on the Ohio Canal.  Through his own arduous
efforts he obtained a college education, entering at the age of seventeen on
a course of study, first in the Geauga Seminary, at Chester, Ohio, and a
little later in the Eclectic Institute, then recently established at Hiram,
this county, and not long after entering that institute he was made an
assistant teacher.  In 1854 he entered the Junior Class of Williams College,
Massachusetts, having in a little more than three years fitted himself for
college, and completed the first two years of college study.  He was a
favorite pupil of the venerable President Hopkins, and when he graduated, in
1856, he carried off one of the highest honors of his class.  In obtaining
his education Mr. Garfield was wholly dependent upon himself.  His earnings,
first as a carpenter, then as a teacher, supplemented by some small loans
(subsequently repaid in full), carried him through his course of study.

Immediately after his graduation Mr. Garfield was chosen teacher of the
ancient languages and literature in the institution at Hiram, and the
following year he was elected Principal.  He was an incessant and effective
worker, frequently teaching six or seven hours a day, besides attending to
the general supervision, and delivering numerous lectures on a great variety
of topics, both before his students and before popular audiences.

In 1859, without solicitation or effort on his part, the Republican party in
his district elected him to the Ohio Senate, and although the youngest
member of that body, he immediately took rank with foremost Senators in
ability, industry, and usefulness.

Just before the conclusion of his Senatorial services, the Southern
Rebellion broke out.  In accordance with all his political antecedents and
convictions, Mr. Garfield at once espoused the cause of the Union against
secession.  Early in the autumn of 1861, he was made Colonel of the
Forty-second Regiment of Ohio Volunteers.  This regiment, largely enlisted
by his personal efforts, was rapidly organized, drilled, and prepared for
the field.  On the 17th of December it was ordered to eastern Kentucky, and
its Colonel was placed in command of the Eighteenth Brigade of the Army of
the Ohio.  With this command Col. Garfield conducted a highly successful
winter campaign against a force of rebels under the command of Humphrey
Marshall.  The victories of Middle Creek and Pound Gap were the first
successes of the Union Army that year in the West.  Their immediate result
was the expulsion of the Confederate forces from eastern Kentucky.
President Lincoln, recognizing the value of this success, promoted Col.
Garfield to the rank of Brigadier-General.

Gen. Garfield now joined the army of Gen. Buell.  He commanded the Twentieth
Brigade at the battle of Shiloh and in the subsequent operations around
Cornith, Decatur, and Huntsville, Ala.  In the winter of 1862-63 he was a
member of the court-martial that tried Fitz-John Porter.  In January of the
latter year he was assigned to the Army of the Cumberland, then under the
command of Gen. Rosecrans, who at once made him Chief of Staff of the army.
In this position Gen. Garfield rendered distinguished services.  He was the
confidential adviser of the commander-in-chief.  He participated in all the
engagements in middle and southern Tennessee.  He greatly distinguished
himself for ability and bravery in the bloody battle of Chickamauga, and was
immediately promoted to the rank of Major-General.  Here Gen. Garfield's
military career closed.  He resigned his commission of the 5th of December,
1863, to enter another field of duty.

On leaving the army Gen. Garfield took his seat in the House of
Representatives, having been, in October, 1862, elected by the Nineteenth
Ohio Congressional District its Representative to the Thirty-eight Congress.
He soon took rank among the ablest and most useful members of the House.
During his first term he served on the Committee of Military Affairs, during
the second on the Committee of Ways and Means.  In the Fortieth Congress he
was Chairman of the Military Committee, and in the Forty-first Chairman of
the Committee of Banking and Currency.  On the organization of the
Forty-second Congress, he was made Chairman of the Committee of
Appropriations, the most laborious and responsible position in the House.
The duties growing out of these responsible positions were discharged in a
manner highly creditable to himself and advantageous to the country.  But it
must not be supposed that they bounded the circle of his legislative life.
Some of his special services were peculiarly onerous and valuable.  In 1865,
as Chairman of a special committee, he made a thorough examination into the
affairs on the Printing Bureau of the Treasury Department.  As Chairman of
the Committee on Banking, he investigated the Gold Panic of 1870, and
submitted to the House a valuable report of the investigation.  In 1867 he
introduced into the House, and carried through it, the bill creating the
National Bureau of Education, - a most valuable bureau, which he defended
against all assaults.  But his most conspicuous and valuable services were
in the field of the national finances.  He continued thorough study of this
difficult subject, for which his previous training well fitted him, rendered
him the most thorough master of it in the House of Representatives, and one
of the most thorough in the country.  Convinced that the interest no less
than the honor of the nation lay in that direction, he strenuously resisted
all propositions looking toward repudiation and inflation, advocating, from
the first, an honest payment of the public debt and a speedy return to
specie payments.

January 13, 1880, the Ohio Legislature elected Gen. Garfield to the United
States Senate, and in the same year he was chosen a delegate to the
Republican Convention to meet at Chicago.  Here, amid unqualified
enthusiasm, he was nominated for the Presidential chair and was subsequently
duly elected.  But President Garfield was not destined to long enjoy his
new-made honors, for the assassin-fiend was already shadowing his footsteps;
the bullet that had its fatal billet had been cast in the mold.  On July 2,
1881, while on the eve of stepping on board the train at the Baltimore
Railway station, at Washington (for he was on his way to Long Branch, there
to meet his wife), he was fired at twice by the graceless madman, Guiteau,
the second shot taking effect, the bullet entering the President's side,
tearing through the spine and lodging in the flesh.

After a long, lingering, painful suffering, heroically borne with true
Christian spirit, the martyred President, in the quiet Francklyn Cottage,
Long Branch, passed through "the Golden Gate" September 19, 1881.  His
remains repose in the beautiful Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio.
	"Fairwell!  The leaf-strown earth enfolds
	Our stay, our pride, our hopes, our fears,
	And autumn's golden sun beholds
	A nation bowed, a world in tears."

James A. Garfield had great powers of physical and mental endurance; he was
strongly built and well proportioned, standing six feet high, a man of wide
range of studies, taste and thought.  Public duties did not engross all of
his talents and attention, for in the spring of 1861, after a full course of
legal reading, he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of Ohio, and
in 1866 he obtained the same standing in the Supreme Court of the United
States.  From the time of his admission to its bar, he every year argued
cases in the latter tribunal.

He had great patience in the accumulation of facts, great skill in
generalization and in the development of principles.  In his chosen fields
of statesmanship, probably no man in Congress had at command a larger body
of systematized knowledge.  As a public speaker, he was forcible and
elegant.  Some of his occasional papers and addresses have a high degree of
merit.  Of these may be mentioned his paper on "The American Census," read
before the Social Science Association; his address on "College Education"
and "The Future of the Republic" and his "Eulogy" on Maj. Gen. George H.
Thomas.  He had large power over young men; and while an educator, many
hundreds of students received from him a vigorous and healthy intellectual
and moral impulse.

Mr. Garfield was married in 1858, to Miss Lucretia Rudolph, of Hiram, and
was eminently happy in his domestic life.  He was a member of the Christian
or Disciples Church, and while a teacher at Hiram - though never intending
to follow that calling - he was an acceptable, and even favorite, speaker in
the pulpits of that denomination.  While thoroughly progressive in his
thoughts and tendencies, Mr. Garfield was far from being an extremist;
abundant evidence of which can be found along the course of his whole public
life.  In 1872 Williams College conferred upon him the honorary degree of
LL.D, as a recognition of his learning and ability.

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End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V00 Issue #287
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