Midwest Guest

Back to school at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio

It's back-to-school time, so I thought it would be nice to visit one of the Midwest's oldest and prettiest campuses at Ohio University in southeastern Ohio near the Appalachian foothills.

Ohio University traces its roots to the early days of the United States when a group of Revolutionary War veterans, figuring it might take a long time to receive payment for their war service, asked the government for one-and-one-half acres of land in lieu of cash.

The group, established as Ohio Company of Associates, received land under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Manasseh Cutler, a Yale graduate and member of the group, insisted on a provision in the agreement emphasizing the importance of education and setting aside land for a school of higher learning.

Visit Ohio University campus and you'll find a passage from that agreement engraved on a stone plaque near the main entrance.

Settlers first arrived in the area in 1797, choosing Athens as a school location because of its location between Ohio's original capital, Chillicothe, and Marietta.

The Northwest Territory legislature and its governor, Arthur St. Clair, approved the school's charter as American Western University in 1802. Ohio became a state in 1803, so the state legislature approved its own charter for the university in 1804.

Ohio University became the first university established in the Northwest Territory, an area covering much of the land that eventually became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

The first building appeared on campus in 1807, and a sundial marks that spot today. Three students enrolled in 1808. Early students most likely took classes comparable to today's high school-level classes due the lack of highly trained teachers in the area.

The school awarded its first two bachelor's degrees in 1815, and Ohio University began offering traditional college-level classes by 1822.

The school experienced slow growth through much of the nineteenth century. The university only had 496 graduates by 1886 (a year when they had 26 men and 11 women enrolled in classes). Growth in the student population accelerated after World War II, and today Ohio University has more than 28,000 students.

Legend has it that more than a few ghosts also call Ohio University home, and the school has a reputation as being the most haunted college campus in the country.

The many early nineteenth-century buildings, and the network of red-brick streets and walkways crisscrossing campus, make Ohio University's campus especially appealing. We've visited the campus a few times, and it's easy to spend most of the day wandering around and taking pictures.

Cutler Hall, a late-Federalist style building dating from 1816, has an interesting history and a couple of close calls with demolishment. Lightning struck the building in 1818, and it only survived because of heavy rains. The building housed dorm rooms, class rooms, labs, a library, and a museum over the years but eventually fell into disrepair and some university officials called to demolish it. It was restored it to its original appearance in the 1940s and earned designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1966. Today the university president and other senior university officials have offices in the building.

The red brick so prevalent on campus speaks to the importance of the brick-making industry in the Hocking Valley during the nineteenth century.

Plentiful clay and shale deposits in the Hocking Valley fired the start of brick making in the area during the early 1800s. Early area brick makers practiced the craft much as Europeans did for hundreds of years, making bricks for specific structures and baking them in the sun or makeshift kilns.

By the 1870s, more modern brick manufacturing began in the area. Walk around campus and see how many bricks you can find engraved with the brick company names or marks.

 

Want to learn more about the school's history? Check out Ohio University 1804-2004: Spirit of a Singular Place by Betty Hollow.

Athens by Richard A. Straw is an Arcadia Press book chock full of vintage views of the town and information about its history.

Want to know more about the ghostly tales surrounding campus? Check out Guide to Ohio University Ghosts & Legends by Craig Tremblay.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Glen Haven, Michigan: Vintage village view of region's maritime and logging history

Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Park is a must-visit destination for those interested in northwestern Michigan's history, with historic districts that include the village of Glen Haven as a fascinating illustration of the region's early maritime and logging history.

The National Park Service purchased the entire village, including a handful of existing buildings, during the mid-1970s, and maintains it today with several restored buildings housing a general store, a blacksmith shop, and a couple of small museums.

While the village and its Lake Michigan shoreline is picturesque at any time of year, visitors particularly interested in Glen Haven's history may want to visit during the summer or early fall when most of the buildings and indoor exhibits are open.

General Store

The logging industry flourished in Michigan during the mid-1800s and, in 1857, C.C. McCarty established a settlement by building a sawmill and an inn on the beach west of Glen Arbor, the nearby village founded by his brother-in-law John E. Fisher. McCarty named his settlement Sleeping Bearville.

The small settlement got off to a somewhat sleepy start as area residents leaving to fight in the Civil War meant slower development. By 1865, McCarty built a large dock to take advantage of the village's protected harbor and proximity to logging operations as returning war vets spurred the village's growth.

Philo Chamberlain, president of the Northern Transit Company, acquired Glen Haven in 1878 as port for his 24-vessel fleet moving wood between Ogdensburg, New York, and Midwestern ports like Chicago and Milwaukee.

Blacksmith shop

D.H Day was the company's agent in Glen Haven and a major player in the town's development during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Glen Haven had 11 buildings by 1881. Several of those buildings still stand as part of the park's historic site, including a general store owned by Day and the village blacksmith shop.

Day worked to diversify the village's economy. He established a cannery operation in the 1920s to process and ship cherries and apples to market from his own farm and 5,000-tree orchard.

In 1901, the Sleeping Bear Point life-saving station was built. Shifting sands forced the operation to move in 1931, but advances in technology like radar, radios, and helicopters made the station obsolete and led to its closing in 1941.

The heyday of the big steamer boats faded as trucking companies expanded and the state's highway system improved. By the late 1920s, few passenger or cargo ships visited Glen Haven, and steamer owners going out of business spelled the end of the town's role as a maritime and transportation powerhouse by 1931.

Some tourists visited the area from the mid-1930s through the mid-1970s for sand dune rides in Dunesmobiles, but those rides ceased with the park service's purchase of Glen Haven and the surrounding area to preserve as the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

The last remaining village businesses closed during the 1970s as the park service planned restoration of Glen Haven to pretty much its 1920s appearance.

Blacksmith shop interior

Today, highlights at Glen Haven include:

• The General Store, which displays and sells items like kitchenware, food, and toys during the summer. It is a visitor center for the village.

• The blacksmith shop, one of the first buildings constructed in the village, is also open during the summer. Volunteers demonstrate the blacksmith's craft and explain the importance of the business during the village's early logging days, when blacksmiths helped keep the area's logging industry going with timely and expert repair of the logging equipment.

• The park service restores the Glen Haven Cannery building as a museum, and it is the largest public exhibit of Great Lakes small craft and equipment.

• The Sleeping Bear Point Coast Guard Station and Maritime Museum stages re-enactments of life-saving rescue drills during the summertime.

Want to learn more about the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and its history? Check out Sleeping Bear: Yesterday and Today by George Weeks, which the National Park Service site recommends as a good source of regional history information and historic photos of the area.

 

History buffs might also enjoy learning about the area's agricultural history and another historic area at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore by checking out my recent story, Northern Michigan's Port Oneida Rural Historic District revisited.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Northern Michigan's Port Oneida Rural Historic District revisited

Port Oneida's days as a thriving farming, lumbering, and port community may be far behind it, but you can still visit this northern Michigan ghost town today and listen closely to the wind whispering through the trees to learn a little about the region's agricultural history and culture.

We first photographed the Port Oneida Rural Historic District, which is now part of the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, in early 2009. The district covers more than 3,400 acres has over 120 buildings, many of them in various states of repair or restoration.

Our self-guided tour that winter day took us through the more accessible portions of the historic district, and the absence of leaves on the trees made for some interesting, and somewhat spooky shots, of an abandoned farm that the Weaver family called home from the late 1800s until around the end of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Read my story, Port Oneida Rural Historic District celebrates northern Michigan's agricultural heritage and my accompanying Photo Friday feature to learn more about our wintertime visit to Port Oneida, read a bit about the town's history, and see some of my Weaver Farm photos.

We visited Port Oneida again this summer. The little community still exudes some of the same sense of ghostly slumber we felt during the winter, although absence of winter snow meant we could explore more of the seasonal roads and farms tucked away from the main roads.

Even as the summer sun shone brightly overhead, the whitewashed exteriors of many of the buildings still gave them a ghostly air, even as the occasional splash of color lent a hint of life to the scene.

We occasionally spotted park service staff doing repair or restoration work. The mix of vintage and new materials in some buildings demonstrated the park's work to keep as much of the original buildings as possible, even if it meant reconstructing a whole new building or facade around an element like an original door and latch.

The Eckhert Farm, with its red facade and cellar entrance, played host to many community dances during the late 1800s, and the Eckherts grew corn, potatoes, and grain.

I particularly enjoyed visiting the Ole Olsen Farm, which sits across the road from the Eckhert farm. The Olsen family's main crops were wheat and potatoes, and one of the last Olsens to live in this house, with its green trim and tin roof, stayed there until the mid-1990s. I found myself alone on the front porch, where I sat a while and listened to the silence, punctuated by nothing more than the occasional chirp of a bird of buzz of an insect.

This time we were also able to walk into the North Unity School, a vintage 1870s cabin that once served as the community's one-room school. The school is near Narada Lake, although we didn't walk down to the lake because it was loon nesting season when we visited.

We checked back with the Weaver Farm, although the thick summer vegetation and leaves on the trees made it difficult to spot from the road. The thick summer vegetation also meant the mosquitoes were visiting at the same time!

The Weaver Farm appears to be one instance where the park service is letting nature take its course as the building appeared even more dilapidated that it did in early 2009. Portions of a door and wall that I remember as being somewhat intact earlier are missing now, and I wonder what, if anything, will be left of the house when we next visit Port Oneida.

Want to learn more about Port Oneida's history? Check out Farming at the Water's Edge by Marla McEnaney.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Shooting Star from North Star, Ohio

Many people think Annie Oakley came from the wild west, and in a sense, they're correct. The shooting star known as "Little Sure Shot" was born in an area known as "the wilds" of western Ohio, near a little town called North Star, so perhaps it was pre-ordained that she become one of the world’s best-known shooting stars.

Discovering Annie Oakley's gravesite came as a surprise as we were driving Highway US-127 along Ohio's western border. I spotted a small sign along the side of the road pointing to Annie Oakley's grave, and I immediately turned off of the main highway to travel about a mile on a side road to reach the rather unassuming Brock Cemetery.

Annie Oakley was born in a log cabin about five miles east of North Star in rural Darke County on August 13, 1860 as Phoebe Ann Mosey. Spellings of her family's surname include "Mozee", "Moses", "Mauzy", and "Mosty" among other variations, but her living relatives at the Annie Oakley Foundation go with "Mosey" because that version appeared on her father's gravestone and military records from the War of 1812.

Her father struggled to provide for his family, working the farm and driving a wagon 14 miles into Greenville to sell corn and wheat. In 1866, he drove through a blizzard and arrived home with frozen hands and feet and unable to speak. He died from the overexposure to the cold weather

His death plunged the family deeper into poverty. Phoebe lived at the county "poor farm" for a while, and then went out to live with, and work for, an abusive family. The Mosey family reunited around the time Phoebe was 13 or 14.

Phoebe Ann began using her father's old rifle to hunt by the age of eight. Her shooting helped feed the family, provided meat they sold, and helped pay off the mortgage on the farm by the time Phoebe was 15.

In 1875, she won a contest in Cincinnati, Ohio, against marksman Frank Butler. The two eventually married, and Phoebe took the stage name Annie Oakley from the name of an area near Cincinnati where she and Frank lived as she began touring in circuses with him as his assistant.

Frank Butler quickly realized that his wife was more talented and marketable, so he became her assistant and manager.

Annie and Frank joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1885, where Annie was the star attraction for 17 years.

Annie's signature shooting tricks included shooting dimes tossed into mid air from 90 feet away, splitting a playing card in two edgewise with a shot from 30 paces away, and shooting the ashes from a cigarette her husband held in his mouth.

Annie Oakley taught many women to use guns. She felt shooting was good physical and mental exercise, and an excellent means of self-defense.

She offered to organize regiments of female sharpshooters during the Spanish American War and World War I, even promoting the idea of women serving in combat positions with the armed services. No one took her up on those offers, but Annie did demonstrate gun safety to servicemen during and raise money for the Red Cross during World War I.

Annie died of pernicious anemia on November 3, 1926 in Greenville, Ohio. Frank Butler died 18 days later.

As you can see in the photos here, the couple's gravesite sits among other graves and near the cemetery lane, with another modest sign.

A stretch of Ohio's route 127 in Darke County became "Annie Oakley Memorial Pike" in 2000, and it only seems fitting that a sign in the village of North Star identifies it as being near the birthplace of one of the world's best-known shooting stars.

 

Want to learn more? Check out some of these books about this fascinating woman and her life:

Annie Oakley by Shirl Kasper

The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (Oklahoma Western Biographies) by Glenda Riley

Annie Oakley (a DK Biography) by Charles M. Wills

Addendum: The State of Ohio erected a historical marker next to Annie's grave shortly after our visit there. You can see a few photos of the marker by the gravesite at the bottom of this page.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Greenville

Empire, a quintessential and quirky small northern Michigan town

We love visiting the Village of Empire, Michigan, not only because it is right in the middle of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore area and home to the national park’s headquarters and visitor center, but also because it is just one of those cool little northern Michigan small towns.

The wide Front Street running through the village looks pretty serene in this wintertime view, when about 400 year-round residents pretty much have the place to themselves, but come summer, this village about 25 miles west of Traverse City teems with tourists. Visitors come for the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Empire events like the annual Dunegrass Festival in summer, which has a full bill of folk and bluegrass music plus displays by local artisans.

I always eagerly await Michigan’s late spring/early summer asparagus season because asparagus is one of my favorite vegetables. Several farms around Empire grow asparagus, and the little town embraces the veggie in a big way with an annual Asparagus Festival.

Producers at the MSN Travel site even took note of this quirky festival, naming it one of the ten weirdest festivals in the world last year.

I hope to get up to Empire during mid-May one of these years to attend the Asparagus Fest. The festival, now in its seventh year, features asparagus, plenty of parties, music, a parade, asparagus theme costumes, asparagus eats at restaurants and stores around town, recipe contests, and cook-offs. One area brewery even offered asparagus beer last year!

Empire also has a great free, public park on the shore of Lake Michigan. The Lake Michigan Beach Park offers an excellent view of the Empire Bluff, which you can see in these summer and winter views. The northwest winds and wide sand beach make it a great place for kite-flying in the spring, while summertime visitors like swimming in the big lake, crossing the parking lot to swim in the smaller and warmer South Bar Lake at the park, or picnicking with friends and family.

Park visitors can also learn about Empire’s history and the importance of the logging industry in the village’s early development by checking out a state historical marker at the former site of the Empire Lumber Company. Plus, geocachers can log another find at this site.

Settlers first came to Empire in the mid-1850s. The community supposedly took its name from a schooner that went aground nearby in 1865, and the vessel served as a village school that winter.

Lumbering came to Empire in a big way in 1887 when the T. Wilce Company established the Empire Lumber Company to provide hardwood for a Wilce-owned flooring business in Chicago. The lumber company quickly became one of the largest hardwood mills in Michigan, making Empire a lumbering boom town in the 1890s and early 1900s.

The village population soared to 1,000 by 1900. The last Empire lumber mill burned down by 1917, spelling the end of the village’s busy lumbering era.

In 1972, the local historians established the Empire Heritage Group to preserve the area’s past. A museum complex that includes a main building, old schoolhouse, fire house and a barn is open during the summer and early autumn.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Early northern Michigan pioneer history comes alive at Hesler home

We love visiting lighthouses and learning about their history, but visiting the little log Hesler home adjacent to the Old Mission Point Lighthouse north of Traverse City, Michigan, offers a unique opportunity to learn about the earliest pioneers in the region.

Joseph and Mary Hesler settled along the eastern shore of the Old Mission Peninsula in the mid-1850s, clearing the land of dense forest and building a simple log cabin with the timber they harvested.

The snug little cabin featured outside walls joined with modified dove-tailed joints and served as shelter for the couple until they sold it in 1866.

Joseph, a Canadian, and Mary, born in Ireland, were typical of the Irish, English, Canadian, and Scottish immigrants living and farming in the Old Mission Peninsula region by the 1860s. Their cabin was also typical of the sort of homes built in the region during that era.

I was unable to discover what happened to the Heslers after they moved from their little log home, but the cabin served as a private home, shelter for migrant workers coming to the area to pick fruit like northern Michigan’s famous cherry crops, as a school, and, intriguingly enough, as a shelter for a bull!

By the early 1990s, the little cabin was empty and slated for demolition until area residents spent several years rallying to save, restore, and move the home to a site 14 miles to the north and next to the Old Mission Point Lighthouse.

In 2001, the State of Michigan erected an historical marker telling the story of the home, which is a rare surviving example of the log homes from the early settlement of Old Mission Peninsula. Visitors can peek in the cabin’s windows or, in the warmer tourist season, look through a glass partition and listen to a recorded history of the cabin, to see how northern Michigan’s earliest pioneers lived.

The wooded area next to the lighthouse is the perfect site for the Hesler home, giving visitors a real sense of how the home might have looked tucked into the northern Michigan forest.

Families and avid geocachers might also enjoy searching for a couple easy caches at the park (one physical cache box and one virtual cache), both of which are still active as I write this story.

 

Be sure to come back to Midwest Guest later this month to learn more about the Old Mission Point Lighthouse.

 

Check out the book Traveling Through Time: A Guide to Michigan’s Historical Markers for the complete text of the Hesler home marker and to find other interesting sites marked by the State of Michigan in Grand Traverse County and the surrounding area.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Traverse City

Photo Friday: Rosa Parks bus at The Henry Ford

Little did Rosa Parks know that when she boarded city bus 2857 in Montgomery, Alabama, one December day in 1955 that it was the beginning of a ride that would change history, help strike down restrictive segregation laws in the South, and advance the cause of civil rights in the United States.

The original bus, found rotting away in an Alabama field, now sits proudly restored at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.

Check out yesterday’s story here at Midwest Guest to learn more about Rosa Parks and this historic bus.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

See the bus Rosa Parks rode into history at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan

Rosa Parks, the “mother of the civil rights movement”, moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1957, so it only seems fitting that the Montgomery, Alabama, bus she rode into history after refusing to relinquish her seat to a white man in December of 1955 followed her to Michigan.

We’re fortunate to be able to view the historic vehicle at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, which lovingly restored the bus after three decades of neglect when it sat rusting away in an Alabama field. The story of Rosa Parks, her move to Detroit, and her influence on the civil rights movement throughout the years is interesting enough-the story of what happened to the bus at the center of her story is intriguing as well.

Other African American women violated Montgomery city ordinances dictating strictly segregated city buses before Parks’ historic refusal to move, but Montgomery civil rights leaders picked Parks, a hard-working seamstress with an impeccable reputation, as the face of the case to challenge the Montgomery law.

Montgomery civil rights leaders called for a bus boycott. The question ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled Montgomery’s segregation law unconstitutional, and the 381-day bus boycott ended in December 1956.

Parks earned many awards and honors, including receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Meanwhile, a man named Roy H. Summerford purchased the old 36-seat bus Montgomery city bus and parked it in a field where it ended up as a derelict hulk used to store lumber and tools. Summerford died in 1986, and his daughter inherited the bus.

The bus had a brief bit of fame in 1990 when it was one of three buses used in a movie called The Long Walk Home. The bus, already inoperable by this time, rolled through the scenes with the aid of a cable pulling it along.

Summerford heirs finally decided to sell the bus in 2000 by initially listing it for sale on eBay. The listing drew media attention, but a lack of documentation about the authenticity of the vehicle probably made some potential bidders hesitant to meet or beat the $100,000 minimum asking price.

Officials at the MastroNet auction house began researching the bus and its background, eventually authenticating it largely using a collection of press clippings from the mid-1950s assembled by a professional clipping service.

The bus went up for auction in 2001 and drew at least 45 bids, including from the city of Denver, the Smithsonian, and The Henry Ford. The Michigan museum won the bus with a bid of $427,919 and spent nearly $500,000 total to pick up the bus, the clipping collection, and a 1955 Montgomery bus driver uniform, coin changer, and punch.

The bus was in pretty rugged shape with a missing engine, missing seats, and broken windows. The vehicle was rusty and the original “fruit salad” paint scheme of white, yellow, and green faded beyond recognition.

The Henry Ford spent $300,000-plus to restore the bus, with help from the Federal government in the form of a $205,000 grant through the Save America’s Treasures program.

I remember viewing the bus shortly after The Henry Ford acquired it, when they briefly put it on display before beginning the long and expensive restoration. This National Bus Trader magazine article from 2002 has some great photos of that initial showing of the bus at The Henry Ford and a ceremony honoring Rosa Parks as she viewed the vehicle.

Rosa Parks died in 2005, and you can visit her burial place at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Parks’ influence lives on and today, visitors can board the restored bus and sit in the place she refused to vacate back in 1955.

Check out my story about a unique Michael Jackson tribute near Rosa Parks’ burial place in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Readers interested in learning more about Rosa Parks might enjoy Rosa Parks: A Life by Douglas Brinkley or Rosa Parks: My Story by Rosa Parks and Jim Haskins.

Interested in learning more about the bus boycott or the early civil rights movement in general? You might enjoy Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson or Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963 by Taylor Branch III.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Dearborn

President Garfield’s Lawnfield home drew the nation to Mentor, Ohio

Today President James A. Garfield’s Lawnfield home exudes an air of quiet elegance, but the home and its spacious grounds drew the nation’s attention to Mentor, Ohio, when Garfield literally conducted his campaign from his own Ohio front porch in 1880.

The hugely popular Civil War hero, educator, and legislator originally envisioned the home in Mentor as a place where he could farm, conduct agricultural experiments, and teach his children to farm. Life had other plans for Garfield, though, who emerged as a compromise candidate during a seemingly deadlocked Republican convention in 1880.

We enjoyed taking a docent-led tour of the home and grounds at Lawnfield. Our guide explained the history of the house, told us how Garfield ran his successful campaign for president from the house’s front porch and a small outbuilding behind the house, and told us about his widow Lucretia’s dedication to preserving her husband’s legacy through meticulous care of his papers and other artifacts.

Built in 1832 as a 1 ½ story house by James Dickey, the Garfields expanded the home after purchasing it in 1876. By 1880, the Garfields added 11 rooms to the 9-room home, making a much larger 2 ½-story home to more readily accommodate the couple and their five children.

Another notable improvement made by the Garfields was the addition of a large porch across the front of the house. A train stop at the rear of the Garfield property brought thousands of admirers directly to the presidential candidate. Visitors disembarked the train and walked down a short lane to see Garfield make campaign speeches from this porch- giving rise to the idea of a homey, “front porch campaign”.

Garfield campaign office

Other buildings on the property include a small building behind the house that served as headquarters and telegraph office for the campaign, a carriage house (that now serves as a visitor center), an impressive 75-foot-tall windmill/pumphouse, and other barns and outbuildings.

The press corps of the day encamped on the lawn of the home through that 1880 campaign, dubbing the place Lawnfield.

Garfield went on to win the presidency and left for Washington, never returning to his beloved Lawnfield before his assassination.

After Garfield’s death, Lucretia Garfield stayed on at Lawnfield. She added a memorial library wing and vault to the house, carefully preserving her husband’s papers, artifacts, and historical legacy. Seeing Mrs. Garfield’s meticulous record-keeping and preservation was one of the more fascinating parts of our tour of Lawnfield, and it was interesting to learn that her efforts resulted in establishing one of the first real presidential libraries.

Garfield heirs sold Lawnfield to the Western Reserve Historical Society in 1936. The Society restored the home and opened it to the public.

Lawnfield earned designation as a National Historic site in 1980, and a multi-million-dollar restoration in the late 1990s recreated the home much as it was in the late 1800s. About 80 percent of the period furnishings in the home today originally belonged to the Garfield family.

Visitors cannot take photos inside of the home, but you can get a peek at Lawnfield’s interior at the Western Reserve Historical Society site.

Check out Cleveland monument is lasting tribute to President James A. Garfield for more about this president’s life, and his final resting place.

Readers interested in learning more may enjoy reading the Garfield biography, Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield.

I also recently discovered the availability of an intriguing looking reprint of an original book written by Horatio Alger in 1881 called From Canal Boy to President: Or the Boyhood and Manhood of James A Garfield.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Mentor

Photo Friday: More photos from the Garfield Memorial

We spent quite a while in the Garfield Memorial when we visited the monument in Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery. It’s especially interesting to consider that President James A. Garfield, the last president born in a log cabin and the product of a difficult and impoverished childhood, has such an architecturally elaborate memorial building.

Check out my story, Cleveland monument is lasting tribute to President James A. Garfield, for more about this president, his life, and the drive to honor his accomplishments with a proper monument after his untimely assassination in 1881.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved