Garfield won the Republican nomination for president in 1880, and Arthur was nominated for vice president to balance the ticket as an Eastern Stalwart. Her family was primarily of English and Welsh descent, and her grandfather, Uriah Stone, had served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Arthur's father, William Arthur, was born in Dreen, Cullybackey, County Antrim, Ireland to a Presbyterian family of Scots-Irish descent; he graduated from college in Belfast and emigrated to the Province of Lower Canada in 1819 or 1820. Malvina Stone met William Arthur when Arthur was teaching school in Dunham, Quebec, near the Vermont border. The office was a patronage appointment of minor importance until the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, when New York and the other northern states were faced with raising and equipping armies of a size never before seen in American history.