Thomas Garfield

My Brother's Keeper

Quick Facts

Significance:

Brother of 20th President of the United States

Place of Birth:

Newburgh, (now Independence) Ohio

Date of Birth:

October 16, 1822

Place of Death:

Jamestown, Ottawa County, Michigan

Date of Death:

April 12, 1910

Place of Burial:

Jenison, Ottawa County, Michigan

Cemetery Name:

Hanley Cemetery

Thomas Garfield was the second child born to Abram Garfield and Eliza Ballou Garfield. He was born October 16, 1822 in Newburgh (now Independence), Ohio. By 1831, the Garfield family had grown to include Abram and Eliza and children Mehetable, Thomas, Mary, and James—the future president of the United States. The Garfield siblings did have another brother named James Ballou who was born in 1826 , but died in 1829. Thomas was only ten when his father Abram died on May 8, 1833, leaving him as the man of house.  He worked the family farm alongside his mother Eliza and sister Mehetable. Thomas wanted all of his siblings to attend school while he took care of the farm. At one point in his young life Thomas had a job chopping wood for .25 a cord.  “When I was fifteen years old mother owed $7 on a wool-carding and cloth bill, and I went to work chopping three-foot wood at twenty-five cents a cord to pay it. I worked all winter at those wages, and that is the way I kept the family. Those were hard times…”

Thomas was a deeply religious Christian. Joining the Disciples of Christ at the age of 16, he never drank or smoked a day in his life and thought dancing was sin.“If I could have my way, there would not be another drop of liquor sold in this country, or brought into it. I never used tobacco, or tasted liquor in my life, I never bought a cigar, or a glass of liquor, and never went to a circus or a dance. I went to a menagerie once, when a boy, but I did not go into the next tent, where a circus was going on. I never owned a watch, nor had a piece of jewelry. I have always lived a quiet, peaceful life, and have never cared for such things.”

He was a staunch Republican but never wanted to be involved in politics. “I am an elder in the congregation of Disciples of Christ at Jamestown, and that is the only office I ever held. I have never sought preferment of any kind, and the township offices that have been offered to me I have always refused.”

On October 18, 1849 Thomas married Mary Jane Harper, a native of Maine. The couple lived in Solon, Ohio near family until they moved to Michigan. “We sold the farm in Ohio in 1854 and moved to Michigan. I lived three years in Byron Township, this county {Ottawa}, and then went back to Ohio, where I worked around on different farms for ten years. And then I came here to Jamestown Township, Michigan.” One reporter who visited Thomas at his Michigan home wrote, “…I climbed the hilly yard to the front door of a one-story house, built of wide pine boards, nailed upright and unpainted. Through the window of the principal room, which occupied half the house, a spinning wheel, decked with fillets of wool, looked out.”

Thomas and Mary Jane moved to Jamestown, Michigan in 1867 and lived there for about ten years before a fire destroyed their house. Thomas wrote of getting financial help from his Congressman brother: “James helped me pay for it, and when our house burned in 1877, he helped me rebuild in return for what I had done for him.” The Michigan home had many pictures on the walls of James A. Garfield and their mother Eliza Ballou Garfield. The Garfields had a son on August 25, 1850 and named him James Abram after his uncle. It was said that the baby had the same high forehead and the same features and form as his well-known uncle.  A second child was born to the couple, born in 1853, a girl named Eliza, after her grandmother. Two years later, on April 26, 1855, their last child, Florence, was born.

At the beginning of the Civil War Thomas wanted to enlist but was denied.  “I tried to enlist in the army with James, but they wouldn’t take me.” There is no documentation as to why he was not able to serve, but it is known that he suffered from seizures (epilepsy). Some reports said that James did not visit Michigan but Thomas refuted this by saying “James visited me several times. He was here in 1878, when he spoke in the city on the resumption of a specie payment. He was always so loving, and affectionate when he came to see me.” It wasn’t until after President Garfield was shot that reporters realized that he had a brother and they wanted the chance to interview him. A reporter for the Chicago Inter-Ocean asked Thomas why he had not gone to see his brother after being shot. Thomas’s response was because of the cost of travel, and also because he had been told that nobody would be admitted to see the President. “My sister Mary and I went to Elberon Cottage before he died, but the doctors wouldn’t let us in.” Thomas said this of the experience, “Mary was a good nurse, and James called for her in his sickness, and she was very anxious to go in to nurse him, but the doctors wouldn’t let her. We have always believed he was doctored into death, and if Mary could have taken care of him, he would have lived.” Thomas was 59 years old when President Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881 in Washington, D.C.  

After the death of the President the whole Garfield family (siblings, mother, wife and children and any other members) traveled to Cleveland for the funeral. The funeral took place on September 26, 1881.   The same reporter who had asked Thomas if he visited the President asked if he had attended the funeral. Thomas Garfield replied saying “Yes, sir, I was gone from the home for three days, and when I reached Cleveland was directed to go to the house of Mrs. Colonel Shelden, where my mother and sister were.” 

Thomas Garfield’s name was mentioned during the presidential campaigns of 1892 and 1896. People opposing the Republican Party made it known to others that Thomas Garfield was going to be voting against the party he had always supported. This claim was false and angered Thomas, who spoke out in papers against this claim, but because the remarks were so close to the 1892 election results they were not seen by many. In 1897, he made it known before the election that this was again a false claim given from the other side.

“If my martyred brother were alive his voice would be heard from ocean to ocean in favor of the Republican party, and its principles, and I shall not prove self a traitor to his memory, and to the people of my country, who placed him in the presidential chair, a position the highest in the gift of the people, I believe the principles he advocated are as true."

Just as the Garfield family in Ohio suffered loss so too did the Garfields in Michigan. Thomas and Mary Garfield lost their daughter Florence Garfield O’Dell in 1887 at the age of 32. Mary, Thomas’s wife, died January 4, 1900 at the age of 71 from uterine cancer. Thomas Garfield died at the age of 87 on April 12, 1910. He and Mary are interred in the Hanley Cemetery in Jenison, Michigan. His daughter Eliza died in 1910 as well. Son James A. Garfield, named for his presidential uncle, died on May 6, 1926 at the age of 75. 

Thomas helped shape the life of his mother and siblings—including his younger brother James, the future President of the United States—for the better. Thomas and James shared an unbreakable bond all their lives and even President Garfield’s assassination could not break it. Thomas Garfield was known to some as the “forgotten Garfield,” but today he is revered as one of the most important people in the life of the 20th president of the United States.