Apparently, living near Ohio affords us the opportunity to visit a handful of presidential homes and historic sites as day or weekend trips. While I knew about the Hayes Home and Museum well in advance of our day trip there because a friend had recommended it to me, I was not aware that Ohio is second only to Virginia in terms of how many presidents were born in that state.
When I read that the Garfields made their home outside of Cleveland, I was reminded that we had actually visited the Garfield memorial and tomb in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery when we visited the city to enjoy the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 2013.
Having finished the biography of Lucretia Rudolph Garfield, it was time for a day trip back to Cleveland to see Lawnfield, the home that James bought for his family in 1876, where James Garfield performed his "front porch campaign" for the presidency, and that Lucretia expanded and lived for more than three decades after James was assassinated.
Being from generally the same period as the Hayes Home, it was fun to see that the Garfield Home was also covered in fantastic wallpaper, covering walls in every room and on the ceiling in most. The photograph below does not even begin to do justice to the beauty and detail of the wallpapers in this home. I apologize for my old cellphone camera and poor photography skills.
And while the house tour and corresponding museum exhibits were informative and enjoyable, I found the Garfield Home to be quite a contrast to the Hayes Home in terms of the story told. While the Hayes Home is very much the story of both Lucy and Rutherford together, the Garfield Home is very much the story of Garfield, with Lucretia only presented as a secondary character--quite surprising, and disappointing, considering how short a time Garfield was actually president and how much more time Lucretia spent in the home compared to James. In many ways, the home seems as much a memorial to James as it does the home Lucretia lived in and raised a family for four decades. The image above shows two portraits of Lucretia, but every room in the house had some sort of image of James, most had more than one. The most "alive" part of the home, when it came to Lucretia were the tiles around the fireplace in the dining room, which were painted by her and her children; Lucretia painted the to in the upper corners:
Stay tuned for future presidential historic site entries, now that I know there are at least two more presidential homes and the First Ladies National Historic Site in Ohio.
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