Whack, Bimster and Lady Kensington: Garfield Nicknames, an 1850 Storm, a Neighbor's Diary

James A. Garfield gave every one of his children a nickname — his daughter Mollie was "Whack," because she whacked her head when she ran into things — and the habit outlived him. Three stories from James A. Garfield National Historic Site: a daughter's tribute, a young man's diary, and a presidential campaign recorded by the neighbor.

James A. Garfield and his daughter Mollie (right), who wrote about him for The Youth's Companion*. Credit: National Park Service.*

Mollie remembers "Papa"

Father's Day goes back to 1910 and did not become an official holiday until 1972. Well before either, in 1893, Mollie Garfield honored her father's memory in a popular children's magazine of the day, The Youth's Companion:

"My father was not only our guide and counsellor, he was our comrade. He was interested in all we were thinking about and doing. He was the director of our work, the willing sharer of our play."

She recalled the rhymes, jingles and "good and wise sayings he taught us between courses at the dinner table," and the farm: "As Father believed there was no place like a farm for children, it was our good fortune to have a generous taste of country life… The farm was Father's haven of rest – the only place where he felt he could breathe freely."

Mollie and her brothers carried the habit to their own children: James R.'s son Rudolph was "Bobs," Irvin's son Irvin McDowell Jr. was "Mike," Abram's daughter Mary Louise was "Polly," and Mollie's son Rudolph was "Lad."

"It mangled him terribly…"

James A. Garfield as a young man. Credit: National Park Service.

In June 1850, Garfield was an 18-year-old immersed in study and on fire with his recent religious conversion; he had joined the Disciples of Christ only three months earlier. His diary follows him with other Disciples to revivals at Aurora and then Mentor, Ohio. "When we arrived at the place [Aurora], they were just raising the great tent," he wrote on Saturday, June 1. The following Saturday, in Mentor, "we found the tent raised and the people collecting."

Then disaster struck. On June 14, "it commenced raining … I think it rained the hardest I ever saw it." The next day: "Arrived at home and heard that Sydney Smith was killed by lightning last evening while crossing the road. It mangled him terribly… This has been a most destructive rain. Bowels', Stoneman's, and Willey's dam have all gone and a great many mills. The water rose so that it came into Widow Smith's house about one foot."

The campaign next door

E.T.C. Aldrich, Garfield's next-door neighbor, kept a diary for forty years — "One — or when history was really in the making — two lines a day," his granddaughter said. He watched, and sometimes helped, as Garfield improved his farm and home, and he recorded the excitement of the 1880 presidential campaign.

• October 1880: group after group came to the Garfield farm, among them 867 Cleveland businessmen, 440 Indiana men, 1,267 soldiers, 570 ladies from Cleveland and 441 Germans. Evenings were busy with meetings in Garfield's office.
• The cost: visitors took "souvenirs." Vegetables were stripped from the gardens, fruit pulled from the orchards, someone stole the front gate, and the yard was trampled so badly that it had to be re-sodded.
• The day before the election: "Went to Old Veterans about going to election" — local supporters volunteered to take older veterans to the town hall to vote.
• Election night: Aldrich waited with other supporters in Garfield's campaign office and wrote: "Election. Garfield elected."
• November 3: a delegation of 700 from Oberlin was at the General's. The next day, Aldrich went next door to see the newly elected president.

Sources

Based on The Garfield Telegraph, June 2023, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Quotations are from Mollie Garfield's 1893 article in The Youth's Companion, James A. Garfield's diary for June 1850, and the diary of E.T.C. Aldrich.