Little Known First Ladies: Lucretia Garfield Quiz

Answer: Crete

Lucretia's siblings and friends frequently called her Crete as the name Lucretia was fairly uncommon and considered old-fashioned. Lucretia's heritage was mainly Germanic and she traced her lineage all the way back to European royalty from several countries.

Her father Zebulon was a minister and her mother was named Arabella. Lucretia was very religious and attended the church and school her father founded. She was also very well educated, spoke languages and studied a wide variety of subjects.

Answer: Her stolidity

James Garfield was Lucretia's Greek teacher at the seminary (James was only about a year older than Lucretia). However, the future president always felt Lucretia more intelligent than he was and fell in love with her. However, James admitted to Lucretia that he was having issue with her lack of emotions because she was always seeing the world from an intellectual point of view. Lucretia was pleased to hear from James sometime after she left Geagua Seminary to discover he was still interested in her.

However, Lucretia was devastated to learn he was seeing another woman named Rebecca Selleck. Nonetheless, James insisted Lucretia was the woman for him and proposed to her.

Answer: Teacher

Lucretia always had a strong interest in education so it seemed natural she would become a teacher. She taught in various Cleveland schools and enjoyed being independent of her father who encouraged this. Lucretia began to grow weary of her engagement to James because she did not feel he was committed and the engagement had lasted several years.

After James proposed, Lucretia quit her teaching in preparation for the marriage but returned to work as an art teacher when she began thinking James would renege on the wedding.

Answer: An invitation to the wedding

Lucretia was frustrated that the engagement was taking so long and began to believe the wedding would never happen. When James finally set a date, Lucretia sent him his own wedding invitation as a sarcastic gesture. By this time, Lucretia had fallen out of love with James but married him anyway because she had already agreed to, felt as if she could not renege on the promise and feared she would regret it if she did not marry him.

Answer: False

The marriage did start off badly but it improved over time. Soon after their marriage, James was called to serve in Civil War for the Union. He was hardly ever around and had many affairs of which Lucretia seemed to be aware despite them occurring around the country. Despite being apart, the couple had seven children and Lucretia was frustrated with having to raise them all by herself. James had his mother, whom Lucretia hated, move in with his wife to help raise the children. Lucretia and James' relationship was conducted mostly by correspondence for the first six years of the married life. Lucretia was blunt in her letters to James and made frequent mention of how she despised the way he treated her. James even once wrote to Lucretia saying he wished they had never married.

The relationship did not improve until 1863 when their first child Eliza died suddenly and husband and wife shared mutual grief. Further improvements came that same year when James took a seat in Congress. He often sought Lucretia's political advice as she was more savvy in such matters than he was. Lucretia was also amongst the most popular congressional wives which boosted James' political clout.

Answer: An alias

During the Presidential Election of 1880 when James Garfield was running for the top office, Lucretia served several critical parts. She actually opposed women going out in public to campaign but supported such notions in private. Much of the campaign was conducted from the Garfield front porch and Lucretia more or less ran the daily operations of the campaign from their home. Under the name of Mrs. Greenfield, Lucretia would travel to New York on her husband's behalf to meet with the Stalwart Republicans, a large faction of the party that was disappointed in Garfield's nomination. Stalwarts shared some policy views with Democrats and Garfield risked losing their votes. Lucretia almost single-handedly negotiated with them on Cabinet positions and she was able to secure their support for her husband.

Answer: A history of the White House

Lucretia had a deep interest in American history and found many parts of the White House fascinating. She desired learn everything she could about the building's history, including its past renovations and the motivations behind them. In her writings, Lucretia stated that she could actually feel the ghosts from the building's past.

Unfortunately, her desire to complete a history of the White House was not fulfilled because of her short tenure as First Lady.

Answer: Recovering from malaria

Soon after becoming First Lady, Lucretia contracted malaria and went to seaside New Jersey to recover. When her husband was shot, Lucretia was still ill but had improved drastically. James was actually at the train station on his way to New Jersey to visit his wife when he was shot by Charles Guiteau (a Stalwart Republican). Instead, Lucretia traveled to Washington to be by his side before both of them moved back to New Jersey so the president could recuperate.

Guiteau had previously attended several White House events and met Lucretia at least one time at the White House and is said to have taken a liking to her. The future assassin had actually intended to shoot Garfield earlier than July 1881 but spared the president when he saw how weak Lucretia was when the president saw her off by train after she fell sick. He wished to spare Lucretia the grief of witnessing her husband's assassination.

Answer: A female doctor was paid half that of the male doctors who attended to Garfield

Lucretia oversaw almost all of James' personal care and needs and let the physicians handle the medical aspects of his care. She did not care for many of his physicians whom she felt were not using sanitary conditions and felt they were incompetent. However, she liked the care Dr. Susan Edson gave the president and was dismayed to learn after James' death, that Congress had only intended to pay Edson half of what it intended to pay the male doctors. Lucretia took up the fight with Congress and won the battle. Dr. Edson received the full $1,000, equal pay to the male doctors.

Answer: Presidential libraries

Lucretia left Washington and moved back to Ohio after James was assassinated. She hated her husband's successor Chester Alan Arthur and never spoke to him after he sworn in to office. Lucretia returned to a private life in Ohio where she collected all of James' letters and designed memorials for him at the house they lived in prior to the White House. This is widely considered the first presidential library. However, Lucretia wished to remain as private as possible and refused any attempt by anyone to read James' letters and records until a biography could be published (which wouldn't happen for decades).

Lucretia rarely was seen in public again, although her daughter Mollie claimed she was quite active in various causes behind the scenes. Lucretia supported women's suffrage (according to Mollie) but never actively took up the cause because she opposed organizations that advocated for causes, finding them useless and often distracting. Lucretia moved to California in the early 20th century and endorsed Teddy Roosevelt in his failed comeback bid after hearing him speak. She later abandoned the Republican Party and joined the Democrats and supported Woodrow Wilson. During World War I, Lucretia volunteered from her home for the Red Cross before dying in 1918 at the age of 85.