He then spent two years at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and proved himself to be a strong student and skilled public speaker. From 1851 to 1853, Garfield attended Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (now Hiram College) in Hiram, Ohio. Instead, as a teen, he settled for a position towing barges up the Ohio Canal to help support his impoverished family. He died on April 4, after just a month in office.Īs an avid reader of adventure novels, Garfield aspired to become a sailor. Several weeks after his March 4, 1841, inauguration, Harrison caught a cold that turned into pneumonia. His father, Abram Garfield, died less than two years later, so his mother, Eliza Ballou Garfield, raised young James and her older children while also managing the family’s small farm.ĭid you know? The only person to serve less time in the White House than James Garfield was William Henry Harrison, America's ninth president.
James Abram Garfield was born on November 19, 1831, in a log cabin in Orange, Ohio, near Cleveland.
