Irvin McDowell Garfield

Quick Facts

Significance:

Son of President James A. Garfield

Place of Birth:

Hiram, Portage County, Ohio

Date of Birth:

August 3, 1870

Place of Death:

Boston, Suffolk County

Date of Death:

July 19, 1951

Place of Burial:

Falmouth, Barnstable County, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Oak Grove Cemetery

Irvin McDowell Garfield was born in Hiram, Ohio on August 3, 1870, the third son of James and Lucretia Garfield. He was named for Civil War Union General Irvin McDowell, “as a protest against the unjust treatment that that noble man has received from the public,” according to his father. He was usually called Irv. According to his parents, Irvin was the child that always “marched to the beat of his own drummer."

Irvin and his younger brother Abram were home schooled until the fall of 1880. Their father was in the midst of his presidential campaign, older brothers Hal and Jim were in their last year at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, and sister Mollie was staying with friends in Cleveland to attend school there. Irvin and Abram had their first school experience at Mentor Village School, just a short walk from the Garfields’ home in Mentor, Ohio. They attended that school until the end of February 1881. The family moved into the White House on March 4, 1881, and all of the Garfield boys were tutored there by a gentleman named Dr. Hawkes. He thought that Irvin and Abram talked too much and spelled and wrote poorly!

There are many stories of Irvin riding his high-wheeled bicycle indoors, careening down staircases and and through corridors in the Executive Mansion when the weather was bad—stories that as an adult Irvin always denied. He did tell his niece that there was a set of stone steps outside the White House that might have been the scene of some stunts.

On the morning of July 2, 1881, Irvin and Abram Garfield were on a train carrying them home to Mentor, Ohio for the summer. When the conductors on the train heard that President Garfield had been shot in Washington D.C., they kept the boys from hearing the news. Train stations along the way were alerted and station masters warned travelers and newsboys to keep the news away from the children. When they reached Mentor, it was their Grandpa Zeb who told them about their father. They did not return to Washington, D.C., or see their father alive again.

Irvin Garfield went to St. Paul’s School in the fall of 1885, and, following in the footsteps of their father and older brothers,graduated from Williams College in 1893. He then attended Harvard Law School, and worked in his brothers’ law firm, Garfield and Garfield, in Cleveland during the summer months of 1894. Irvin graduated and was admitted to the bar in 1896. He practiced law in Boston, specializing in probate, trust, real estate and railway law at the firm of Warren, Garfield, Whiteside and Lawson.

Irvin achieved distinction in many fields. He was president of the Williams College Alumni Association; a football official at Harvard and other New England colleges; a trustee of Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now part of Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston); a trustee of the Warren Institution for Savings; and chairman of the Lawrence Gas and Electric Company.

Irvin Garfield married Susan Emmons on October 16, 1906. They had three children—Eleanor, born June 27, 1908; Jane, born May 10, 1910; and Irvin McDowell, Jr., called Mike, who was born January 19, 1913.

Irvin and Susan lived in Boston, and summered at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where Irv enjoyed golfing. Irvin McDowell Garfield died July 19, 1951, at age 80. He is buried in the Emmons family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery in Falmouth, Massachusetts. His wife Susan was buried beside him in 1953.