President James A. Garfield

We at D&A have been “spooked,” in an agreeable way, by the ghost of James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States. As returning visitors to this website may recall, we discovered back in 2004 that Garfield, while a member of the House of Representatives, built a three-story brick home on the northeast corner of 13th and I Streets in Northwest Washington. More exactly, Bob Dawson’s desk in D&A’s second-floor suite at 1225 I Street sits about where Garfield had an upstairs office.

We’ve been thinking about our Garfield connection and doing some research into the life of this Ohio Republican. He is best known now as the second president to be assassinated. Like Lincoln, he died from gunshot wounds, on September 19, 1881 at age 49, after six months in office.  Vice President Chester A. Arthur of New York became the 21st president.

Beyond those well known facts, we have wondered what is interesting and significant about Garfield. Which of his qualities resonates with us?  Which of his skills and traits have we at D&A inherited, so to speak, by working in the very space he and his family occupied while he was a United States Representative from Ohio’s 19th District, in the northeastern corner of the state? The 19th elected him nine times. (Garfield has no lineal successor in the House because Ohio now has only 18 Congressional districts.)

 

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