James Rudolph Garfield | |
---|---|
23rd United States Secretary of the Interior | |
In office March 5, 1907 – March 5, 1909 |
|
President |
Theodore Roosevelt William Howard Taft |
Preceded by | Ethan Allen Hitchcock |
Succeeded by | Richard Achilles Ballinger |
Personal details | |
Born |
Hiram, Ohio, U.S. |
October 17, 1865
Died | March 24, 1950 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
(aged 84)
Political party | Republican, Progressive |
Spouse(s) | Helen Newell Garfield |
Alma mater |
Williams College Columbia University, J.D. |
Profession | Politician, Lawyer |
James Rudolph Garfield (October 17, 1865 – March 24, 1950) was an American politician, lawyer and son of President James A. Garfield and First Lady Lucretia Garfield. He was Secretary of the Interior during Theodore Roosevelt's administration.
Garfield was born in Hiram, Ohio, the third of seven children born to James Abram and Lucretia Rudolph Garfield. For a year prior to his father's presidency, he studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. On July 2, 1881, at the age of 15, he witnessed the shooting of his father by disgruntled office-seeker Charles J. Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac railroad station in Washington. The President and his son were waiting for a train en route to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where young James had been recently accepted, when the shooting took place.
Following his father's death on September 19, 1881, he studied at Williams College, graduating in 1885, before moving on to Columbia Law School where he studied law and earned his J.D. in 1888. That same year, he was admitted to the Ohio bar and established the Cleveland, Ohio-based law firm of Garfield and Garfield, with his brother Harry Augustus Garfield. From 1890 until her death in 1930, he was married to Helen Newell. Their grandson, Newell Garfield, later married Jane Harrison Walker, a granddaughter of President Benjamin Harrison and Harrison's second wife Mary Dimmick Harrison as well as the great-grandniece of James G. Blaine.