James Abram Garfield was the twentieth president of the United States. He grew up in Orange, Ohio, graduated from Williams College in 1856, became president of Hiram College in Portage County, Ohio, and was a lay minister of the Disciples of Christ Church. He was elected to the Ohio Senate, and in 1858, married Lucretia Rudolph. Garfield served in the Civil War, as a lieutenant-colonel of the 42nd Ohio regiment. He was a major general when he resigned in 1863 to take a seat in the United States House of Representatives, where he served for 17 years. Nominated in 1880 as a compromise Republican presidential candidate, his campaign was conducted from Lawnfield, his Mentor, Ohio, home. Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, and died September 19. He was survived by his widow, Lucretia Garfield, and by his children; Mary, who married his former secretary, Joseph Stanley-Brown, Irvin McDowell, Harry Augustus, who became president of Williams College, James Rudolph, a Cleveland attorney, Republican politician and member of Theodore Roosevelt's cabinet, and Abram, a Cleveland architect. The collection consists of correspondence, election tallies, essays, book inscriptions, legal papers, corporate records, scholarly and political notes, a minute book, scrapbooks, receipts, invitations, sympathy cards, calling cards, newspaper clippings, notebooks, pamphlets, phrenology charts, a eulogy, a presentation album, a resolution, a lock of hair, broadsides, programs, poems, sheet music, drawings, lithographs, and paintings.
