James & Lucretia

James A. Garfield met Lucretia Rudolph at school in Chester, Ohio. Their friendship continued casually while they were both students at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. Apparently, absence really does make the heart grow fonder, because it wasn't until after they parted ways that their long courtship began, with a letter from James while he was visiting Niagara Falls in 1853. Their courtship lasted five years, and nearly all of their exchanges, certainly their most meaningful ones, were through letters, since the two lived and worked in different towns and James traveled quite a bit. Even after they were married, their correspondence continued, since James was away from home more often than he was there.

At first in her letters, Lucretia was shy and reserved with her emotions. But the more the two wrote to each other, the more she began to open up and reveal her ideas, hopes and dreams. However, when they met in person, she was again the shy, diffident girl, polite yet restrained, and James wondered where the passionate woman he had come to know from her letters had gone. Lucretia was aware of this discrepancy, and decided to risk revealing her insecurities in future letters. The risk paid off by bringing the two closer together, and eventually they were married. Still, Lucretia feared that James married her out of a sense of duty, stemming from the solid camaraderie that developed out of the letters, rather than from passion and true love. It was perhaps this emotional incompatibility that posed the biggest challenge in their marriage, and was perhaps what caused James to stray adulterously on more than one occasion. Another challenge was their almost constant separation. Lucretia lived in Hiram while James served in the Ohio Legislature, fought in the Civil War, and for the first six years he served in the Congress in Washington. James finally built a house in Washington and Lucretia and their 3 children joined him there in 1869. It was reported to be the best time in their marriage. James and Lucretia had 7 children. Sadly, they witnessed the death of two of them. Their daughter Eliza, whom they called Trot, died of diphtheria in 1863 and their son Edward, whom they called Neddie, died of whooping cough in 1876. The same year they lost their son Edward, James purchased a farm in Mentor, Ohio, which was later nicknamed Lawnfield. Lucretia busied herself with creating a warm and proper home for her husband and family there. Lucretia was an extremely intelligent woman, well read and brimming with ideas, and she proved to be a key influence on her husband in the later years of their marriage. She saved the nearly 1200 letters from their years of correspondence, and they are now preserved in the James A. Garfield papers in the Library of Congress. Back to the top