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Lucretia Rudolph was born in 1863 in Hiram, Ohio. Her family were devout members of a religious sect called the Disciples of Christ. Lucretia’s father, Zebediah Rudolph, was a leader in both the business and religious communities in Hiram. Lucretia’s childhood was happy and uneventful. She liked school and was a very good student. At a young age she developed the love of literature that she was to retain throughout her life.
In secondary school, Lucretia met the man who was to become her husband many years later, James Abrams Garfield. “Jim” was also an intensely devout Disciple of Christ, who had been raised in poverty and was trying to pay his way through school by working menial jobs. They lost touch for a while when James went off to Williams college in Massachusetts, but after he graduated in 1856, he returned to Hiram to become the principal of the Eclectic School, which had been founded by the Disciples. During this time, the friendship of Lucretia and James deepened into romantic love. They found they had a lot in common. Aside from sharing the same religious beliefs, they were both interested in politics and strongly opposed to slavery. On November 11, 1858, they were married.
In 1858, James was elected to the Ohio State senate. In 1861, he was called to service in the Union army, and in the space of two years, he rose from lieutenant colonel to major general. By all accounts, he served his country well, but the separation was hard on Lucretia, especially when their first child, a baby girl, died in 1863. Later that same year, James became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He quickly gained a reputation as an honest, incorruptible politician—a rarity in Reconstruction days as it is now. Lucretia was thrilled with her husband’s success, and devoted herself to running a happy, comfortable home. Though another child, a two-year-old boy, would die in 1876, five of their children survived to adulthood: Harry, James R., Mary, Irvin, and Abram. The family enjoyed traveling back and forth between their homes in Washington and Ohio.
Lucretia and James’ marriage had only gotten better over time. They were both voracious readers and joined a Washington literary society. They enjoyed dining out and giving small dinner parties for their many friends. Lucretia was considered to be a gracious, if somewhat shy, hostess. She was often ill, however, and James was deeply worried about her health: “When you are sick, I am like the inhabitants of countries visited by earthquakes.”
James Garfield was elected to the Presidency on the Republican ticket in 1880. He defeated his Democratic opponent, General Winfield Scott Hancock, by just 10,000 votes. The private, retiring Lucretia had refused to even pose for a campaign photo, thinking it vulgar and tasteless. Soon after Garfield was sworn in, in the spring of 1881, Lucretia became sick again, with malaria and exhaustion. James believed that the stress of living in the White House contributed to his wife’s ill health, and sent her off to a seaside resort in New Jersey to calm her nerves.
It was while recuperating in New Jersey that Lucretia was informed that her husband had been shot by a mentally unstable man in a railroad station. She rushed back to Washington to find her husband on the brink of death. For three months prayed at his bedside and was a tireless nurse. Extreme measures were taken to try to save the President’s life, including calling in Alexander Graham Bell to search for location of the bullet with an electrical device he had invented. Finally, in early September, James Garfield succumbed to infection and died. The nation was outraged at his suffering and death, and the hearts of the people went out to Lucretia.
After the death of her husband, Lucretia and her children moved back to their home in Ohio, and Lucretia spent the next 36 years preserving her husband’s legacy. She died on May 14, 1918.
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