Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1880-06-18
GENERAL JAMES A. GARFIELD.

stands to-day tho ablcst man in tho House of |
Representatives, and one of the ablest of !
American statesmen.
General Garfield was born in the village of !
Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, a few miles
from Cleveland, on the 10Th of November
1881, the youngest of four children who were
orphaned by the death of their father within
two years after the birth of this last of them.
Both his parents we're of New England ex-
traction. The father, Abraham Garfield,
though born in Otsego County, N. Y, was of
family that had resided in Massachusetts for
several generations. The mother, Eliza Bal
lou niece of Rev. Hosea Ballou, the noted
Universalist Clergyman was born in Cheshire
County, n. II. The death of Abraham Gar
field in 1888 left the widow and her four young
children without fortune i'm the backwoods.
But there was a little farm and on this they
worked, the youngest by and by coming to he
able to bear share of the burden. In the
winter there was a village school with such
small store of books as the neighborhood af-
! forded for private reading. So the winters
and the summers passed till the family had
grown up, and the youngest, when sixteen
! years of age, had learned q little of the car
/ penter's trade.
| But this did not prove very remuneratfVe.
! So in his Seventeenth year young Garfield Sc
cured employment on the Ohio Canal, and
! from driver on the tow-path rose after
!
agreed with him, and the fall of lS4s found him
back under his mothers roof, slowly recover
ing from a three-months siege of the fever
! and ague. Up to this time he would seem to
! have cherished little ambition for anything
| beyond the prospects offered by the laborious
| life he had entered. But 1t happened that the
winter school was taught by Il promising
! young man named Samuel Bates. He had at
| tended high school in an adjacent township,
! known as the "Geauga Seminary" and with
| the proselyttng spirit common TO young men
! in the backwoods, who beginning TO taste
the pleasures of education, he was very anx-
| ious to take back several new students with
! him. Garfield listened and was tempted. He
! had intended to become a sailor on the lakes,
but he was yet too i'll to carry out this plan,
| and so he finally resolved to attend the high
school one term and postpone sailing till the
! next fall. That resolution made u scholar, a
! MajorGenerai a Congressman, a Senator
! elect, and Presidential candidate out of him,
instead of sailor before the mast on Lake
| Erie schooner.
The boy never dreamed of what the man
would be.
Early in March, 1s4g, young Garfield reached
Chester (the site of the Geauga Academy in
company with his cousin and another young
man from his village. They carried with
them frying-pans and dishes as well as their
| few school books They rented a room in an
old, unpalnted frame house near the academy
| and went to work. Garfield bought the second
| Algebra he had ever seen, and began to study
| it. English Grammar, Natural Philosophy and
| Arithmetic were the list of his studies. His
mother had scrapcd together little sum of
money to aid him at the start, which she gave
him with her blessing when he left his humble
home. After that he never had dollar in his
life that he did not earn As soon MS he began
To feel at home in his classes he sought among
the carpenters of the village for employment
at his trade. He worked mornings, even
lngs and Saturdays and thus earned enough
to pay his way. When the summer vacation
came he had longer interval for work; and
so when the fall termed opened he had enough
money laid up to pay his tuition and give him
BY the end of the fall term Garfield had
made such progress that, though a
lad of eighteen, he was able to teach
district school. Then the future
winters teaching were enough, with his
economical management to pay the expenses of
Whatever he could make at his morning and
evening work at his carpenters trade would
go to swell another fund, the need of which
he had begun to feel.
For the backwoods lad, village carpenter,
tow-path canal hand, would-be sailor had now
resolved to enter college. " Ii is great point
gained he said years afterward, when, in
our hurrying times, ayoung man makes up his
mind to devote several years to the accom-
plishment of definite work" 1t was so now in
his own case. With definite purpose before
him he began to save all his earnings and to
shape all his eXertions to the one end. Through
the summer vacation of 1850 he worked at his
trade, helping to build houses, within stone s
throw of the academy. During the next ses-
sion of the academy he was able to abandon
boarding himself, having found boarding
house where he found the neceSsares of lite
for Sl.06 per week. The next winter he taught
!
attend the I" Institute" over which he was af-
terward to preside, So he continued teaching
term each winter attending school through
winter ana fall, and keeping up with his class
es by private study during the time he was alb
sent. Before he had left Hiram Institute he
was the finest Latin and Greek scholar that the
school had ever seen-and ut this day he reads
and writes the languages tluently. At last, by
the summer of 1854, our carpenter and tow
path boy had gone aS far ms the high school
and academies of his native regime could car
, ry him, He was now nearly twenty-th hree years
old. The struggling, hard-working hoy had de-
Yeloped into a self-rcliant man.
He was the neighborhOOd wonder for
scholarship and general favorte for the
hearty, genial ways that had never deserted
him. He had been brought up in "the Church
of the Disciples" as it loved to call itself OF
which Alexander Campbell was the great
a light. AT an early age he had followed the
example of his parents in connecting himself
with this church. His life corrosponded with
trusted him. He had saved from his school
teaching and carpenter work about hall
enough money TO carry him through the two
years in which he thought he could finish the
! ordinary college course. He was growing old
and he determined that he must go that fall
How to procure the rest of the needed money
} was mystery; but at last his good character
and the good will this brought him solved the
question. He was in vigorous lusty health
4 and life insurance policy was easily obtain
ed. This he assigned to a gentleman whC
. thereupon loaned him what money was need
/, ed, knowing that if he lived he would pay it
. and if he died the policy would secure it
n Pecuniary difficulties thus disposed of, h'
n was ready to start. But whore? He hat
u originally intended to attend Bethany College
u the institution sustained by the church OF
which he was a member, and presided over b,
Alexander Campbell, the man above all other
, whom he had been taught to admire and re
d we're. But as study and experience had en-
II larged his vision, he had came to see tina
there were better institutions outside thu
+ limits of his peculiar sect.
So in the fail of 1854 the pupil of GeGug'
Seminary and the Hiram Institute applied to
l. admission at the venerable doors Of Willlum
] College. GOllHgl
4 and no student attending II; and OF the Presi
e dent he only knew that he had published
- volume of lectures which he liked, and that h
had written n kindly word TO him when m
spoke of coming The western carpenter ant
l.. village school teacher received many shOcl
i'm the new sphere he had now entered. d
n every hand he was made to feel the soca
superiority his fellow students. Their way
were free from the awkward habits OF tn
l. unframed labOring youth. Their speech wa
=, free from the uncOuth phrases of the proVincll
u circles in which he moved. Their toilets mad
n the handiwork of his village tailor sadly shat
by. Their tree-handed expenditures contrast
ed strikingly with his enforced parsimuny. Il
some tOugh-ibered hearts these would hav
t been only petty annoyanccs. To the warm
social, generous mind of young Garfield the
SEEM from more than one indication of hi
@ college lie that we can gather, 10 have been
a source of positive anguish. But he bor
= brayey up, maintained the advance standin
Q i'm the junior class tn which he had been aC
Il mtted on his arrival, and at the end of hi
A two years course lin 1856 bore off the met,
- physical honor of his class-reckoned at vii
I
l. institution to her graduating members. ii
= was four hundred and tifty dollars I'm debt an
. he had only his clothes, his books and HI
Is diploma
Is But now, on his return TO his home, tn
: young man who had gone so far East as to oil
% Williams, and had come back decorated wit
9 her honors, was thought good for anything.
o He was straightway made tutor of Latin an
N Greek in the Hiram Eclectic Institute, !
I which only two years before he had been
Y pupil, and so he began TO work Tor money
pay his debts. So nigh position did he taxi
and so popular did he become that the ne1
year he was made President of the institute,
> position which he continued TO hold until h
!. entrance into political life, hut little befoI
4. the outbreak Of the war Two years OF teacl
' ing during which time he married. left hil
I even with the world. Through the soho
q year of 1858 80 he even began 10 save a lit
! money. AT the same time he commenced I'll
study of law. Meantime he had begun
q draw attention through wider circles tina
n those In which he had been center as teael
or, aud his oratOrical powers had brought hil
4 prominently before the public. As Presidel
/ of the institute, II was natural that he shon