Description:

Garfield Lucretia 1832 - 1918 Poignant ALS by Lucretia Rudolph Garfield on mourning stationary, just months after President James Garfield's death, to business member of New York Stock Exchange



Two page letter, first page featuring embossed monogram "LRG" at top center, second page signed "Lucretia R. Garfield". Letter measures 6 ‘_" x 4 1/8", minor expected flaws do not affect writing or superb readability. Dockett on verso by another hand, "Letter of Mrs. L.R. Garfield, Dec. 20. 1881" . The width of black trim on mourning stationery indicated the length of time passed since the loved one's death. Nineteenth-century social norms usually dictated that the surviving spouse practice mourning customs for between one and two and a half years after the spouse's death.

Lucretia Garfield, or "Crete" as she was lovingly called by her husband of twenty-three years, wrote this letter a mere three months after her husband's death. 20th President James Garfield (1831-1881) was shot in a Washington train station lounge by disgruntled office seeker Charles J. Guiteau (1841-1882) on July 2, 1881. The second bullet lodged near Garfield's pancreas but was irretrievable despite Alexander Graham Bell's attempts to locate the bullet using the newly developing science of metal detection. After five months of excruciating convalescence in the White House and along the New Jersey shore--where he was probed by many doctors unfamiliar with basic germ theory--Garfield died from complications of an infection at age forty nine. The presidential assassin Guiteau was executed by hanging in 1882 following one of the first American court proceedings that considered insanity as a mitigating factor.

Garfield's successor Chester Arthur (1829-1886) along with millions of other Americans admired Lucretia's strength and stoicism in the months and years following her husband's death. She addressed this thank you letter to Mr. Joseph H. Trieken, who had forwarded a copy of Resolutions recently approved by the New York Mining Stock Exchange to the former first lady. In the Resolutions, board members had marked the passing of President Garfield. Lucretia begged Mr. Trieken to convey "her gratitude to the members of the Association for this expression of their high esteem for my husband, and for their sympathy with us in our great sorrow." Lucretia became involved in preserving records related to her husband's presidency in the thirty-six years before her death in the spring of 1918.

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