From Canal Boy to President; Or, the Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield

by Jr. Horatio Alger

Adjoining the field where the flag floats is an unpretentious home, almost as much identified with Gen. Garfield's early history as the one he helped to clear of the forest timber while he was yet but a child. It is the home of Henry B. Boynton, cousin of the dead President, and a brother of Dr. Boynton, whose name has become so well known from recent events.

"While rambling over this place the correspondent came upon this near relative of Garfield, smaller in stature than he was, but in features bearing a striking resemblance to him.

"General Garfield and I were like brothers," he said, as he turned from giving some directions to his farm hands, now sowing the fall grain upon ground which his cousin had first helped to break. "His father died yonder, within a stone's throw of us, when the son was but a year and a half old. He knew no other father than mine, who watched over the family as if it had been his own. This very house in which I live was as much his home as it was mine.

"Over there," said he, pointing to the brick school-house in the grove of maples, around which the happy children were playing, "is where he and I both started for school. I have read a statement that he could not read or write until he was nineteen. He could do both before he was nine, and before he was twelve, so familiar was he with the Indian history of the country, that he had named every tree in the orchard, which his father planted as he was born, with the name of some Indian chief, and even debated in societies, religion, and other topics with men. One favorite tree of his he named Tecumseh, and the branches of many of these old trees have been cut since his promotion to the Presidency by relic-hunters, and carried away.

"Gen. Garfield was a remarkable boy as well as man. It is not possible to tell you the fight he made amid poverty for a place in life, and how gradually he obtained it. When he was a boy he would rather read than work. But he became a great student. He had to work after he was twelve years of age. In those days we were all poor, and it took hard knocks to get on. He worked clearing the fields yonder with his brother, and then cut cord-wood, and did other farm labor to get the necessities of life for his mother and sisters.

"I remember when he was fourteen years of age, he went away to work at Daniel Morse's, not four miles down the road from here, and after the labors of the day he sat down to listen to the conversation of a teacher in one of the schools of Cleveland, when it was yet a village, who had called. The talk of the educated man pleased the boy, and, while intent upon his story, a daughter of the man for whom he was working informed the future President with great dignity that it was time that servants were in bed, and that she preferred his absence to his presence.

"Nothing that ever happened to him so severely stung him as this affront. In his youth he could never refer to it without indignation, and almost immediately he left Mr. Morse's employ and went on the canal. He said to me then that those people should live to see the day when they would not care to insult him.

"His experience on the canal was a severe one, but perhaps useful. I can remember the winter when he came home after the summer's service there. He had the chills all that fall and winter, yet he would shake and get his lessons at home; go over to the school and recite, and thus keep up with his class. The next spring found him weak from constant ague. Yet he intended to return to the canal.

"Here came the turning-point in his life. Mr. Bates, who taught the school, pleaded with him not to do so, and said that if he would continue in school till the next fall he could get a certificate. I received a certificate about the same time The next year we went to the seminary at Chester, only twelve miles distant. Here our books were furnished us, and we cooked our own victuals. We lived upon a dollar a week each. Our diet was strong, but very plain; mush and molasses, pork and potatoes. Saturdays we took our axes, and went into the woods and cut cord-wood. During vacations we labored in the harvest-field, or taught a district school, as we could.

"Yonder," said he, pointing to a beautiful valley, about two miles distant, "stands the school-house where Garfield first taught school. He got twelve dollars a month, and boarded round. I also taught school in a neighboring town. We both went back to Chester to college, and would probably have finished our education there, but it was a Baptist school, and they were constantly making flings at the children of the Disciples, and teaching sectarianism. As the Disciples grew stronger they determined their children should not be subjected to such influence; the college of our own Church was established at Hiram, and there Garfield and I went."