History of Elberon, (Monmouth County) New Jersey United States of America

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James Abram Garfield, twentieth President of the United States, was born in Orange township, Cuyahoga county, Ohio, Nov. 19, 1831; son of Abraham and Eliza (Ballou), grandson of Thomas and Asaniatt (Hill), great-grandson of Solomon and Sarah (Stimson), great, great-grandson of Thomas and Rebecca (Johnson), great, great, great-grandson of Thomas and Mercy (Bigelow), great, great, great, great-grandson of Capt. Benjamin and Elizabeth (Bridge), great, great, great, great, great-grandson of Edward and Rebecca, and great, great, great, great, great, great-grandson of Edward Gairfield, the emigrant (born about 1575, died, June 14, 1672), who came from Chester, England, on the border of Wales, and settled in 1636 at Watertown, Mass. His wife is supposed to have been an emigrant from Germany to whom he was married on the voyage to America. The family maintained a residence in Massachusetts, were farmers, and took part in the American Revolution. Solomon, born July 18, 1743, came out of the war impoverished, and to rehabilitate himself removed with his family to the state of New York and took up a farm in the wilderness where Worcester, Otsego county, was afterward located. His son Thomas was a farmer, married a half-sister of Samuel Russell and died in 1800. His son Abraham, born in 1799, was brought up in the family of James Stone, a relative of his mother. He went to Madrid, N.Y., in 1814, where he worked on a farm for three years. In 1817 he removed to Newburg, Ohio, where he engaged in cutting wood and clearing land, and he was married to Eliza Ballou, born in Richmond, N.H., in 1801, a direct descendant of Maturin Ballou, a Huguenot refugee to Rhode Island. Eliza had migrated to Ohio with her brother James in 1814 and settled near Zanesville, where Abraham Garfield joined them in 1830; and on February 3 of that year they were married and settled on a farm of eighty acres in Newbury, Cuyahoga county, afterward a part of the city of Cleveland. In January, 1830, after four children had been born to them, they removed to Orange township where he purchased eighty acres for $160, built a log house of a single room, and in this house James A. Garfield was born. Nov. 19, 1831. In May, 1833, the father died and the mother continued to cultivate the farm with the help of her oldest son, Thomas, ten years old. James joined the force of farm hands when very young and continued in the occupation, with the exception of a short experience as driver on a canal, until he was seventeen years old. Meanwhile he had gained some school training during the winters at the district schoolhouse, and a large amount of general knowledge from reading. In 1848 he attended two sessions of the Geauga seminary at Chester, Ohio, and the next winter taught a school near his home. In the spring of 1850 he again took up his studies at Chester and in the fall taught the village school at Warrensville. He prepared himself for Williams college at the Western Reserve Eclectic institute, Hiram, Ohio, 1851-54, paying his way by teaching. He also became a preacher in the Disciple's church. He entered the junior class of Williams college in 1854 and was graduated in 1856, receiving his master's degree in 1859. He taught a class in penmanship at North Pownal, Vt., during the winter of 1854-55; was instructor of ancient languages and literature in Western Reserve Eclectic institute, Hiram, Portage county, 1856-57, and president of the institution, 1857-61. The institute was under charge of "The Disciples" (Campbellites), and assumed collegiate powers and responsibilities, Feb. 20, 1867, becoming known as Hiram college. He was entered as a student of law in Cleveland, but pursued his studies at Hiram. He was married, Nov. 11, 1858, to Lucretia, daughter of Zebulon Rudolplh of Portage county. He joined the new Republican party and spoke for Fr?mont and Dayton in 1856. He was a member of the state senate from Portage and Summit counties, 1860-62. When the civil war broke out he was practising law, having been admitted to the bar in 1861, and Governor Dennison in August of that year commissioned him lieutenant-colonel of the 42d Ohio volunteers, a regiment which Garfield had enlisted at Hiram from the alumni of the institute. He brought the regiment to an efficient discipline and was elected its colonel before being ordered to the front, December, 1861, when he reported with his men to General Buell at Louisville, Ky. That officer at once assigned the untried colonel to the command of a brigade and with 2500 men he was commissioned to drive General Humphrey Marshall from the state. He outgeneraled the trained soldier who had a force of 5000 men, driving him from one fortified place to another, and keeping him so busy that he was not enabled successfully to join battle until driven to Middle Creek, Ky., Jan. 10, 1862, where, after maintaining a hand-to-hand fight for five hours, Colonel Garfield, with the help of reinforcements from Generals Granger and Sheldon, effectually routed him. For this service Garfield was promoted brigadier-general with commission to date from Jan. 10, 1862. He was assigned to the command of the 20th brigade and directed to join General Grant who was opposing Gen. A. S. Johnston. He reached the battle-field of Shiloh on the second day of the fight, April 7, 1862, aided in repulsing the enemy, and the next day joined Sherman in his attack on the rear guard of the Confederate army. In June he rebuilt the bridges on the Memphis and Charleston railroad, repaired the fortifications at Hartsville, Tenn., and on July 30, 1862, was obliged to return home on sick leave. He remained at Hiram, Ohio, until September 25, when he was ordered on court-martial duty at Washington and on November 25 was assigned to the Gen. Fitz-John Porter case. He returned to the Army of the Cumberland in February, 1863, and was made chief-of-staff to General Rosecrans. On June 24, 1863, he advised a general advance of the Union army, against the written opinion of sixteen of the general officers, and General Rosecrans ordered the advance. General Garfield wrote out all the orders for the battle of Chickamauga, fought on Sept. 19, 1863, excepting the one by which the battle was lost. He then volunteered to carry the news of the defeat to General Thomas, commanding the extreme left, and succeeded in reaching Thomas's headquarters through a constant fire from the enemy, thus enabling that general to save the army of the Cumberland. This action won for Garfield promotion to the rank of major-general of volunteers, Sept. 19, 1863, "for gallantry on a field that was lost." He now declined the command of a division urged upon him by General Thomas, who had succeeded Rosecrans and who was reorganizing the army of the Cumberland, and at the President's urgent request resigned his commission in the army and took his seat in congress, Dec. 7, 1863, having been elected in October, 1862, as a representative from Ohio in the 38th congress. He was given a place on the committee on military affairs and in congress opposed bounties to raw recruits and favored the confiscation of the property of rebels, and free commerce between the states. On Jan. 13, 1865, he made an exhaustive speech in favor of the constitutional [p.241] amendment abolishing slavery. He was reelected to the 39th congress and at his own request was transferred from the military to the ways and means committee that he might take part in the financial questions in favor of the resumption of specie payment. He was returned to the 40th-46th congresses; was made chairman of the committee on military affairs in the 40th; was selected as head of the newly created committee on banking and currency in the 41st congress; was chairman of a committee on appropriations in the 42d and 48d congresses; and in the Democratic houses of the 44th, 45th and 46th congresses he was given a place on the ways and means committee. He opposed the electoral commission of 1877, but accepted one of the two seats allotted to Republican representatives and discussed before the commission the Florida and Louisiana returns, the latter of which he had made a special personal study, having watched the counting of the Louisiana vote in New Orleans, where he went at the request of President Grant in company with other Republican leaders. When Mr. Blaine took his seat in the U.S. senate in 1877, Garfield became the Republican leader of the house and the minority candidate for speaker. On Jan. 13, 1880, he was elected U.S. senator from Ohio to succeed Allan G. Thurman, and in June, 1880, at the Republican national convention at Chicago, he was nominated as the candidate of the party for President of the United States after a long and exciting contest in which John Sherman, James G. Blaine and General Grant were prominent candidates. His nomination came with the 36th ballot, June 8, 1880. He took the stump in his own behalf and spoke in Ohio, New York and other states, his public appearance adding largely to his popularity. His political enemies brought against him the charges of venality as affecting his connection with the Cr?dit Mobilier, as testified by Representative Oakes Ames, and with the De Golyer contract in the District of Columbia paving patents, both of which had been before the hose of representatives and apparently thoroughly discussed and disposed of, with a verdict of possible indiscretion on the part of Representative Garfield in his not having been careful enough in avoiding the appearance of evil. He was elected, Nov. 2, 1880, by carrying every northern state except New Jersey. Nevada and California, the electoral vote standing 214 for Garfield and Arthur and 155 for Hancock and English, and the popular vote standing 4,449.053 for James A. Garfield, Republican: 4,442.035 for Winfield S. Hancock, Democrat; 307,000 for James B. Weaver, Greenback; 10,305 for Neal Dow, Prohibition; and 707 for John W. Phelps, American. He was inaugurated, March 4, 1881, and made up his cabinet by appointing James G. Blaine of Maine as secretary of state; William Windom of Minnesota, secretary of the treasury; Robert T. Lincoln of Illinois, secretary of war; William T. Hunt of Louisiana, secretary of the navy; Wayne MacVeagh of Pennsylvania, attorney-general; Thomas L. James of New York, postmaster-general, and Samuel J. Kirkwood of Iowa, secretary of the interior. President Garfield at the opening of his administration incurred the enmity of Senator Conkling of New York?who had, late in the canvass, come to the rescue of his party and secured New York to the Republican column?by nominating W. H. Robertson collector for the port of New York in direct opposition to the senators from that state. Both Senators Conkling and Platt resigned their seats in the U.S. senate, May 16, 1881, and on May 18 the senate, relieved of senatorial courtesy theretofore binding it, promptly confirmed the nomination of Mr. Robertson as collector. Vice-President Arthur, who had represented the Grant-Conkling or stalwart wing of the party at the Republican national convention, had gained his nomination as a compromise candidate and was supposed to sympathize with the defeated New York senators. The blind partisanship of a disappointed office-seeker who imagined that assassination would make clear the way to patronage, led him to waylay and shoot the President in the station of the Baltimore and Potomac railroad, July 2, 1881, when en route to attend the commencement exercises of Williams college. In the White House and subsequently at Elberon. N.J., the President lingered between life and death, the subject of earnest solicitation of a nation forgetful of party strife in the presence of the great tragedy, until Sept. 19, 1881, when he died. His body was carried to the national capitol and there lay in state for two days, [p.242] September 22 and 23. It was then taken to Cleveland, Ohio, where it found sepulture in Lake View cemetery and where a grateful nation erected over the spot an imposing monument built by popular subscription aggregating over $155,000. His public utterances have become a part of the standard literature of the world and his historic speech pronounced from the balcony of the New York custom house, when the news of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln stirred the nation to its depths, lifted the pall and comforted a stricken people as they listened to the faith-inspiring words: "God reigns and the government at Washington lives." He was a trustee of Williams college. 1880-81; a trustee of Bethany and Hiram colleges, Ohio; and a regent of the Smithsonian institution. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Williams in 1872 and from the University of Pennsylvania in 1881. His speeches to congress were published, as were his oration on the life of Gen. George H. Thomas and his New York custom-house oration on the death of Lincoln. William R. Balch also collected brief selections entitled Garfield's Words (1881). See The Early Life and Public Career of James A. Garfield by James S. Brisbin (1880); The Life of James A. Garfield by Charles Carleton Coffin (1880); Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield by Major J. M. Bundy (1880); Life, Speeches and Public Services of James A. Garfield by Russell H. Crowell (1881); Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield by Frank H. Mason (1881); A Full History of Gen. James A. Garfield's Public Life and other Political Information by B. A. Hinsdale, president of Hiram college (2 vols., 1882); and Garfield the Ideal Man by J. O. Converse (1882). He died at Elberon, N.J., Sept. 19, 1881.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Elberon, (Monmouth County) New Jersey

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