Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/633

Rh 1829-'30, was commissioned commander in 1841, commanded the receiving-ship "Norfolk" in 1843, and of the " Vandalia," in the Pacific squadron, between 1850 and 1852. In September, 1855, he was commissioned captain, commanded the steam frigate " Colorado," of the home squadron, in 1859-'60, was commandant at Mare Island, Cal., in 1861, and on special service in 1863. In .July of that year he was commissioned commodore, and retired. He was light-house inspector from 1868 till 1809.

GARESCHE, Julius Peter, soldier, b. in Cuba in 1821 ; d. near Stone River, Tenn.. 31 Dec, 1862. He was graduated at the U. S. military academy in 1841, and entered the army as 2d lieutenant of the 4th artillery. From 1841 till 1846 he served on frontier and garrison duty, and afterward with distinction in the Mexican war. He was appointed assistant adjutant-general in 1855. At the beginning of the civil war he applied for active service, and was appointed chief of staff to Gen. William S. Rosecrans, of the Army of the Cumberland. He had previously declined the commission of brigadier-general of volunteers, and remained a lieutenant-colonel in the regular army. At the battle of Stone River, in Tennessee, 31 Dec, 1862, in a gallant attempt to regain the day which then appeared to be lost, Col. Gareschi dashed forward at the head of his column, but was struck in the head by a cannon-ball and instantly killed. He was a founder and liberal beneficiary of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, at Washington.

GARFIELD, James Abram, twentieth president of the United States, b. in Orange, Cuyahoga co., Ohio, 19 Nov., 1831; d. in Elberon, N. J., 19 Sept., 1881. His father, Abram Garfield, was a native of New York, but of Massachusetts ancestry, descended from Edward Garfield, an English Puritan, who in 1630 was one of the founders of Watertown. His mother, Eliza Ballon, was born in New Hampshire, of a Huguenot family that fled from France to New England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. Garfield, therefore, was from lineage well represented in the struggles for civil and religious liberty, both in the Old and in the New World. Abram Garfield, his father, moved to Ohio in 1830, and settled in what was then known as &ldquo;The Wilderness,&rdquo; now as the &ldquo;Western Reserve,&rdquo; which was occupied by Connecticut people.

Abram Garfield made a prosperous beginning in his new home, but died, after a sudden illness, at the age of thirty-three, leaving a widow with four small children, of whom James was the youngest. In bringing up her family, unaided in a lonely cabin (see accompanying illustration), and impressing on them a high standard of moral and intellectual worth, Mrs. Garfield displayed an almost heroic courage. It was a life of struggle and privation; but the poverty of her home differed from that of cities or settled communities it was

the poverty of the frontier, all shared it, and all were bound closely together in a common struggle, where there were no humiliating contrasts in neighboring wealth. At three years of age James A. Garfield went to school in a log hut, learned to read, and began that habit of omnivorous reading which ended only with his life. At ten years of age he was accustomed to manual labor, helping out his mother's meagre income by work at home or on the farms of the neighbors. Labor was play to the healthy boy; he did it cheerfully, almost with enthusiasm, for his mother was a staunch Campbellite, whose hymns and songs sent her children to their tasks with a feeling that the work was consecrated; but work in winter always yielded its claims to those of the district school, where he made good progress, and was conspicuous for his assiduity. By the time he was fourteen, young Garfield had a fair knowledge of arithmetic and grammar, and was particularly apt in the facts of American history, which he had eagerly gathered from the meagre treatises that circulated in that remote section. Indeed, he read and re-read every book the scanty libraries of that part of the wilderness supplied, and many he learned by heart. Mr. Blaine attributes the dignity and earnestness of his style to his familiarity with the Bible and its literature, of which he was a constant student. His imagination was especially kindled by the tales of the sea; a love for adventure took strong possession of him. He so far yielded to it that in 1848 he went to Cleveland and proposed to ship as a sailor on board a lake schooner. But a glance showed him that the life was not the romance he had conceived. He turned promptly from the shore, but, loath to return home without adventure and without money, drove some months for a boat on the Ohio canal. Little is known of this experience, except that he secured promotion from the tow-path to the boat, and a story that he was strong enough and brave enough to hold his own against his companions, who were naturally a rough set. During the winter of 1849-'50 he attended the Geauga seminary at Chester, Ohio, about ten miles from his home. In the vacations he learned and practised the trade of a carpenter, helped at harvest, taught, did anything and everything to get money to pay for his schooling. After the first term, he asked and needed no aid from home; he had reached the point where he could support himself. At Chester he met Miss Lucretia Rudolph, his future wife. Attracted at first by her interest in the same intellectual pursuits, he quickly discovered sympathy in other tastes, and a congeniality of disposition, which paved the way for the one great love of his life. He was himself attractive at this time, exhibited many signs of intellectual superiority, and was physically a splendid specimen of vigorous young manhood. He studied hard, worked hard, cheerfully ready for any emergency, even that of the prize-ring; for, finding it a necessity, he one day thrashed the bully of the school in a stand-up fight. His nature, always religious, was at this period profoundly stirred in that direction. He was converted under the instructions of a Campbellite preacher, was baptized and received into that denomination. They called themselves &ldquo;The Disciples,&rdquo; contemned all doctrines and forms, and sought to direct their lives by the Scriptures, simply interpreted as any plain man would read them. This sanction to independent thinking, given by religion itself, must have had great influence in creating that broad and catholic spirit in this young disciple which kept his earnest nature out