Lucrecia Rudolph Garfield

Lucretia Garfield was introduced to her husband James, while both were attending Hiram College in Ohio. Like Lucy Hays, Mrs. Garfield was a college graduate. She and her husband both became teachers. With the election of her husband to the White House in 1880, Lucretia made plans to return to Washington. (Washington had been her second home for the seventeen years that James served in Congress.) But she was to be First Lady for only a brief few months. Shortly after moving into the presidential Mansion in March 1881, she came down with malaria and went to her New Jersey summer home to recover. When President Garfield was shot on July 2, the First Lady was still recuperating in New Jersey. She returned immediately to Washington. Garfield died of his wounds two months later. His widow lived for another 36 years.