I

CHAPTER XXI.

ANCESTRY.

N the life and character of James A. Garfield there is much to instruct and stir every reader. No one can help feeling that he is reading of greatness, worth and power. There is a fineness, a stalwartness, a rich nobility so winning and commanding that his common acts seem invested with a manly charm. With a history reaching back in his ancestry to England, Wales, Germany and France, covering nearly the whole colonial history of America, rising into prominence in the first century of the United States, and in his person to the highest place in the gift of the people, he becomes a character to attract and hold the interest of all who read of him. He seems to have been a sort of reservoir, into which several ancestral streams poured their choicest waters. In his own case we are reminded of what he said in one of his great public addresses: "Who shall estimate the effect of those latent forces enfolded in the spirit of a new born child-forces that may date back centuries and find their origin in the life, thought and deeds of remote ancestors-forces, the germs of which enveloped in the awful mystery of life, have been transmitted silently from generation to generation and never perish! All-cherishing nature, provident and unforgetting, gathers up all these fragments, that nothing be lost, but that all may ulti

mately reappear in new combinations. Each new life is thus the heir of all the ages,' the possessor of qualities which only the events of life can unfold." This fine recognition of the law of heredity is illustrated in him. And another has said: "Nine tenths of a man's genius is hereditary. The inherited portion may appear large, but it is to be remembered that only possibilities are inherited, and that not one man in a million reaches the limit of his possibilities."

Mr. Garfield was of English descent, with a vein of Welsh blood. One of the family ancestors married into a German family, bringing in a current of Teutonic blood.

Edward Garfield, from Cheshire, England, settled in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1636. From him down through several generations of hardy and patriotic men came Solomon Garfield, the great-grand-father of James A. Garfield. In this line was one Abraham Garfield, who was in the battles of Lexington and Concord, in 1775. They were a strong, heroic, industrious class of men; resolute, vigorous and common-sensed. Solomon Garfield was in the revolutionary war, did faithful service to the end, and soon after removed to Otsego county, New York, where he opened a small farm in the forest and reared his family of five children. Thomas was the oldest of the family, and was the grand-father of James A. Garfield. He married Asenath Hill, and in December, 1799, their son Abram was born. Abram Garfield was a man of fine physique, tall, broad-shouldered, sinewy, and very active. Many traditions are in the family of his feats of strength and agility. Thomas died just at the opening of this century, leaving Abram to fight his own battle of life.

Abram followed the setting sun to the Western Reserve, Ohio, where he built him a cabin, cleared his patch, and began life in the wilderness.

The maternal ancestry of James A. Garfield was still more marked in strong characteristics; but they were mental. On the father's side there was great bodily power; on the mother's side, great power of mind. His mother was Eliza Ballou, born in Richmond, New Hampshire, and was a relative of Reverend

Hosea Ballou, born in the same town, the distinguished pioneer of Universalism. Several Universalist clergymen of the same family connection have been noted for learning, piety and christian zeal. Honorable Maturin Ballou, member of Congress from Rhode Island, is of the same family and the same devotion to moral and religious life. The father of Hosea Ballou was a Baptist clergyman. "The Ballous were a race of preachers," says one of the biographers of Garfield. Probably no family in America ever gave the world so many strong and eminent clergymen. "One of them, himself a preacher, had four sons who were ministers of the gospel, and one of these had three sons who were preachers, and one of these had a son and grandson who were preachers."

The family descended from Maturin Ballou, who was a Huguenot and fled from persecution in France in 1685, and settled in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Here a church was built, which still stands, called the "Elder Ballou Meeting House," in which great numbers of the Ballous have preached. Of this family was Eliza Ballou. From her side her gifted son inherited his bright intellectuality, his strong moral and religious sensibilities, his oratory, love of study, his taste, suavity, and resolution in the performance of duty. Such a union as that of Abram Garfield and Eliza Ballou is prophetic of great possibilities in some of their children.

BIRTH, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

James Abram Garfield was born in Orange, Cuyahoga county, Ohio, November 19, 1831. He was the youngest of four children, Mehetabel, Thomas, Mary and James. His parents had been in Ohio only long enough to get well started in their forest home when he came to cheer it. The log house, a little cleared land, a few acres fenced in and a crop well grown prepared the way for his coming.

In May, 1833, when James was eighteen months old, a fire broke out in the woods near the Garfield settlement, which threatened to destroy all their improvements. The few neighbors fought it with desperation. Abram Garfield, after a long

contest with the fire, rested, only to take a severe cold, which brought on a congestion of the lungs, of which, in a few days, he died.

This was a fearful blow to this now apparently helpless family. The little farm was only partly paid for; only a little of it was cleared; Thomas, the oldest boy, was but ten years old; the afflicted mother's hands seemed to be tied with strings of care to her little flock. How could she feed and clothe them and pay the debt on the farm, so as to hold it as a home. The neighbors saw no way but for her to break up and scatter her children among relatives and neighbors, who would take them rather than see them suffer. But she said "No." She believed in the good Heavenly Father's providence over her and her dependent charge. She believed in love and duty, trust and hope, and she resolutely determined to keep her children to grow up together and love and do for each other. With a wisdom and fortitude found only in a mother's love, she faced the hard task before her, and with a bereft and lonely heart, put her life's toil and care into the ever-prayerful work that had come to her hands.

Thomas was her stay and help and comfort. Boy as he was, he had to be the man of the house and barn and farm. The crops were to be tended and harvested that season; the stock cared for; the wood chopped; provisions made for winter; all the little chores done; the milling and the business of the family attended to, and all by a ten-year-old boy. But Thomas did not falter. He did it all, save what his sisters and his mother could help. They worked and lived and loved together, and the laughing, growing, fat and healthy baby was the joy of them all. Many stories are told of this baby as peculiarly bright and forward, but it is altogether probable that he was much like others of his kind, and gave as few premonitions of his coming greatness. Babies are not often great. But one thing is certain, that Thomas Garfield must have his full share of credit for what James came to be. He was father and brother in one to the orphan babe, and led him on to youth and manhood with a noble and self-sacrificing fidelity. Few sights in

this world are more tenderly beautiful than such a saddened yet chastened family.

In due time there was built near the Garfield home, that marvelous institution, the country school-house, and James with the rest went to be initiated into its mysteries. It is said of him that he was an uneasy little scholar, pestering the teacher out of her wits, in the effort to keep him still, and compelling her at last to go to his mother with the distressing story that he was doing no good in school. What should she do? And yet she must do something; and so she did what all good mothers do in such cases she talked to him out of her mother heart, and he went to school the next day resolved to "sit as still as he could."

As soon as able, he became Thomas' helper on the little farm and a producer of the necessaries of life. He was born to work, as he was to poverty.

The nearest neighbor was a family of Boyntons, near relatives, in which were six children, which, with the Garfields, made a merry group. Their work and play, studies and reading, were had together, as much as possible. Of books, they had few, but they were read till they were familiar. The older children in this group formed a "class of critics," to watch each other's use of words and to study the meaning of words and the construction of sentences. James always thought this "class of critics" was of great help to him in giving him the quality of critical observation of language.

When James was about ten years old, Thomas went to Michigan to earn some money in clearing land, and when he returned, brought seventy-five dollars. They were rich now, they thought, and Thomas proposed building a frame house for the family. On this, James worked and took his first lessons in carpentry. After the house was built, he worked among the neighbors on barns and out-buildings, and thus became quite an adept in this business. While at this work, he put up a building for a potash-maker, who was a man of considerable means and business for that vicinity, who, because he could read and write and keep accounts, proposed to give James fourteen dollars a