Presiding Ladies of the White House

Lucretia Randolph Garfield

Reading edition

TWENTIETH PRESIDING LADY

1881

Lucretia Rudolph, born in Hiram, Ohio, married James Abram Garfield in 1868, soon after he became President of Hiram College, where both studied. The marriage was ideal, his wife’s intelligent sympathy and co-operative ability aiding greatly in his advancement to his high office. Through the terrible ordeal of his assassination, painful illness and death, Mrs. Garfield was vastly sustained by her power of self-control. Her short stay at the White House proved her tactful and cordial in dispensing public and private hospitality, gaining for her the nation’s love and sympathy in her sorrow. President Garfield’s was the first mother of a President to reside at the Executive Mansion, although others had seen their sons thus honored. A fund of over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars was partially raised for the Garfield family before the President’s death, and the knowledge of this was a great comfort to him in his dying moments.

LUCRETIA RUDOLPH GARFIELD

Illustration from Presiding Ladies of the White House containing biographical appreciations together with a short history of the Executive mansion and a treatise on its etiquette and customs