James Rudolph Garfield was the son of United States President James A. Garfield and Lucretia Rudolph Garfield. He graduated from Williams College and Columbia Law School, and practiced law in Cleveland, Ohio, with his brother, Harry Augustus Garfield. James married Helen Newell in 1890. They had four sons; John N., James A., Rudolph, and Newell. He served in the Ohio Senate 1896-1900, and was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to the U.S. Civil Service Commission in 1902, and to the Department of Commerce and Labor, as the first commissioner of Corporations, 1903-1907. He then served as Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior from 1907-1909. He backed Roosevelt's New Progressive Party in 1912, and was defeated as the reform candidate for Ohio governor in 1914. He resumed his Cleveland law practice, became prominent in local Republican politics, and was a member of several civic organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Western Reserve Historical Society, the Cleveland Association for the Hard of Hearing, and the Cleveland Foundation. The collection consists of three scrapbooks of photographs, mementos, invitations, programs, reprints, family history, correspondence, newspaper clippings, political cartoons, and cards from his college years, early married life, and life in Washington. The scrapbooks also cover the career of Garfield's father-in-law, John Newell, president of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, and contain reprints, memorials, and photographs of Poore, Hills, Garfield, Rudolph, and Ballou family members, and of Lawnfield, the Garfield family home in Mentor, Ohio. The scrapbooks provide a picture of Garfield's college life and early career, and of Washington social life during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, as well as cartoon and newspaper commentary of Garfield's activities.
