The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1888-02-10

heart to hurt my boy!'
4 Such was the strong,
bitter cry from the moth
erly heart of Eliza Bal
lou Garfield on the
fatal July day of 1881, when they told
her the president was shot. To
others he vas the brave general, the elo-
quent congressman, the senator, the presi-
dent of the greatest nation on earth;
but to her he was still 'smy boy, my poor
wounded hoy" and SO she moaned these
words agan and in her anguish. When
told that his case was hopeless, she de-
clared that she could not live without
him; but the firm constitution does not
yield SO easily to grief, and the desolate
mother has outlived the murdered presi-
dent ovcrsix years, dying at the advanced
age of s.. An eminent French physician
has said, stGreat men have occasionally
had silly mothers; but there never was u
truly great man who did not have strong
and vigorous mother" This is u little
too sweeIing, but it Is q noticeable fact
that the mothers of nearly all our emf
nent men have been women of marked
bodily vigr, and that a large proportion
of them have lived to see their sons attain
honor and success. The exceptions in
American history will be seen in most
cases to be those in which the mother
yielded to the hardships Of pioneer life
and the diseases of a new country.
President Garfield S mother was a
marked instance of the general rule, for
at 10 she was as straight as a maiden in
her teens, and eight years later, when she
appeared at her sons Inauguration, her
still erect form showed but little of the
:.,E -, c1Rn NO oI,o
went to reside with the presidents widow,
and thereafter her decline was so regular
that thosewho loved her best and saw her
oftenest could only note it from year to
year. EARLY in 1887 her strength began to
fail more rapidly and early in 1888 she
died almost without pain, simply from a
wearing out of the vital functions.
Eliza Ballou was born Sept 20, 1902, at
the foot of Mount Monadnock, n. H., and
was descended from one of the numerous
Huguenot families that sought a refugein
the New World. Her parents followed
the current westward, and in New York,
on the Sd Of February, 1921, she was mar
-xisd to Abram Garfield, then a small con-
tractor, on the Erie canal. The family
history of the Garffelds is study in
itself, a worthy study aside from the fact
that the family gave president to the
United States; for it has had the time and
experience to become most thoroughly
Americanized. Edward Garfield, an Eng
ish Puritan, landed at Boston in 1880
and soon settled at Watertown, where his
descendants remained for nearly two CEN
turies. Abram Garfield, fifth in descent
from Edward, took part in the battle Of
Concord, and his nephew, Abram, moved
to Otsego county, N. Y, where, as afore-
said, he married Eliza Ballou, neither
being quite twenty years old at the time.
A son and two daughters were born to
them; then they followed the line of de-
velopment westward to Cuyahoga county,
O., where James Abram Garfield was
born Nov. 10, 1881, and in which county
he was buried
We know more minute particulars prob
ably Of his early life than Of any other
American president; for the mothers
memory was singularly vivid as to the
events Of those years, and she never
wearied of recalling them. In the cam
paign of 1877 in Ohio, when there was q
tacit understanding that Gen. Garfield
was to be chosen United States senator if
the Republicans secured the legislature,