James and Lucretia Garfield

The journalist Mary C. Ames once described Lucretia Randolph Garfield (1832–1918) as having a “philosophic mind” that made her not only her husband’s equal “but in more than one respect his superior.” Garfield, who was born in Garrettsville, Ohio, loved literature and the classical world. She was fluent in French, German, Latin, and ancient Greek and spent much of her time in Washington, D.C., reading books that she borrowed from the Library of Congress.