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Almon Rockwell: A Friend at the Deathbeds of Lincoln and Garfield

When Congressman James A. Garfield wanted to relax after a long day, he often turned to an old army friend, Colonel Almon Rockwell. The two met in college, fought in the same war, played billiards for years, and in the end Rockwell stood at the bedsides of two assassinated presidents. The National Park Service tells the story in a piece by Scott Longert, a retired park guide at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site.

Almon F. Rockwell, a man in a suit jacket with a mustache

Almon F. Rockwell, one of Garfield's oldest and closest friends. Image from the NPS page.

A friendship that began at college

Garfield, who lived forty-nine years, had a remarkable number of friends: politicians, businessmen, classmates and soldiers. The ones he valued most seem to have been those he met young, starting at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. Rockwell was born on October 17, 1835, in Gilbertsville, New York, and entered Williams College in September 1852. In his junior year he made friends with an older student from the Midwest, Garfield, and the friendship lasted until the President's death in 1881. After graduating Rockwell studied medicine in Philadelphia and was licensed in 1858, though the author finds it hard to tell whether he ever practiced.

War and two deathbeds

In the fall of 1861 Rockwell received a commission in the Army of the Ohio as a first lieutenant on General Don Carlos Buell's staff. He saw action at Fort Donelson, and at the Battle of Shiloh he ran into his old classmate Garfield, by then a brigadier general. They reminisced after the fight and on the march to Corinth. Rockwell then fell ill with malaria and was moved to the provost marshal's department, and later became an assistant adjutant general who helped organize and outfit new regiments of African-American soldiers.

On April 14, 1865, a frantic message told Rockwell that President Lincoln had been shot. He raced to the Petersen house across from Ford's Theatre and stayed at the bedside through the night until Lincoln died the next morning.

After his army commission expired, Rockwell took a post in the Quartermaster Corps of the regular army, helping to build several forts in the West, including Fort Larned, Fort Gibson and Fort Sill, and serving several years at Fort Yuma, Arizona. He was then recalled to Washington to take charge of the national cemeteries.

Billiards, baseball and stocks

Back in Washington, Rockwell looked up Garfield, then a congressman. Garfield noted in his diary a delightful reunion after seven years apart, and the gift from Rockwell of a gold matchbox inscribed "From an old fellow to another." The two played billiards several times a week, met for card games and for Washington Nationals games on quiet spring days, and together bought shares in the Silver King Mining Company in Colorado, though the article says it is not clear they made much. Their families were close too: Garfield's sons Hal and Jim roomed with Rockwell's son Don at St. Paul's Prep School, a tutor taught the boys at the Rockwells' Washington home in January 1881, and all three entered Williams College that year.

The Garfield family

The Garfield family, very close with the family of Almon Rockwell. Library of Congress.

July 2, 1881

Before Garfield took office he arranged for Rockwell to become Superintendent of Public Buildings for Washington, D.C., a post he kept until President Chester A. Arthur's term ended in 1885. On July 2, 1881, Rockwell had gone ahead to the Washington train station to make arrangements for the President's trip to Williams College. He heard gunfire behind him and turned to see Garfield on the ground. Charles Guiteau had shot the President. Rockwell organized a party to carry him to a makeshift ambulance and back to the White House.

A depiction of Charles Guiteau shooting the President

Charles Guiteau shot President Garfield on July 2, 1881. Harper's Weekly.

For the eighty days that followed, Rockwell never strayed far, visiting every afternoon and evening, and he traveled with the family when the President was moved to the seashore at Elberon, New Jersey. Hours before Garfield died on September 19, 1881, the two spoke one last time. Garfield feared his legacy was incomplete and that he might be forgotten, and Rockwell assured him the American people would always hold a special place for him.

What came after

Rockwell finished his term as Superintendent, returned to the Quartermaster Corps and retired in 1897. He died in Paris on July 31, 1903. His family gave his extensive papers to the Library of Congress, and archivists were surprised to find among them a bullet that proved to be the one removed from Garfield's body at the autopsy. Why Rockwell had it is uncertain.

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