Description:

Garfield James 1831 - 1881 18-year-old James A. Garfield's illustrated schoolbook "Lectures on Botany" by Mrs. A. Lincoln (not Mary Todd Lincoln), signed three times by him - used while a student at Geauga Academy in 1850.

Book signed "J.A. Garfield" in pencil on first blank flyleaf, "J.A. Garfield / Hiram / Ohio" on verso of this flyleaf, and "James A. Garfield / March 18th 1850" in ink on the second blank flyleaf. On verso of this flyleaf is his 2.75" x 1.5" bookplate imprinted "Inter Folia Fructus / Library of / James A. Garfield." "Familiar Lectures on Botany, Practical, Elementary, and Physiological, with a New and Full Description of the Plants of the United States, and Cultivated Exotics, &c. for the use of Seminaries, Private Students, and Practical Botanists" by Mrs. Almira H. Lincoln. New Edition, Revised and Enlarged, Illustrated by Many Additional Engravings. New York: Huntington and Savage, 1848. Leather covers. Foxed flyleaves. Half of pages 33-38 (three sheets) have been diagonally torn off. Gilt-lettered black label on spine scuffed. Boards and spine professionally restored to good condition.

Housed in a custom brown-cloth covered clamshell case with "Familiar / Lectures / on Botany / Mrs. Almira / H. Lincoln" stamped in gilt on a red leather label at the top of the spine and, on lower portion, also in gilt, "James Garfield's / Signed Copy / 1848."

From JamesGarfield.org: "In 1849, Garfield's mother persuaded him to enter Geauga Academy in Chester, Ohio, which was about ten miles from his home. During his vacations he learned and practiced carpentry and helped at harvest, he taught and did anything and everything to get money to pay for his schooling. After his first term, he needed no aid from home, he had reached the point were he was self-sufficient. While at Chester, he met a Miss Lucretia Rudolph, his future wife ... He studied hard, worked hard, cheerfully ready for any emergency ... His nature, always religious, was at this period profoundly stirred in that direction. He was converted under the instructions of a Campbellite preacher, was baptized and received into that denomination ... From this moment, his zeal to get the best education heightened and he began to take wider views, to look beyond the present and into the future. In 1851, after finishing his studied in Chester, he entered the principal educational institution of the Campbellites, Hiram Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College). He was not a very quick study, but he was determined and he soon had an excellent knowledge of Latin and was fairly adept in algebra, natural philosophy and botany..." The book here offered was his botany book which he kept for the rest of his life.

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