July 14th, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2011
GARFIELD, Lucretia (1832-1918) wife of James A. Garfield, was First Lady of the United States in 1881. During the three months that the President fought for his life, her grief and devotion won the respect and sympathy of the country. On the night of Garfield's death, according to the doctor, she exclaimed, "Oh, why am I made to suffer this cruel wrong?" After his death and funeral, the bereaved family went home to their farm in northern Ohio. For another 36 years she led a strictly private, but busy and comfortable life, active in preserving the records of her husband's career. She created a wing to the home that became a presidential library of his papers. Autograph Letter Signed “Lucretia R. Garfield” 2pp. on fine mourning stationary with monogram at top, West Mentor, Ohio, September 10, 1904, with matching cover free franked “Lucretia R. Garfield” and addressed to Mr. N.H. Farlow, in Pasadena, California, with both West Mentor and Pasadena cds’. It reads “Will you pardon my tardy acknowledgement of your note and the photographs. I was ill...Are you still in California?...I hope to hear my little house is finished so that we may leave here about the first of October....” Fine condition. Lucreita Garfield lived comfortably on a $350,000 trust fund raised for her and the Garfield children by financier Cyrus W. Field. She spent winters in South Pasadena, where she built a home designed by the celebrated architects Greene and Greene to whom she was distantly related. She died at her home in South Pasadena, California on March 14, 1918.
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