Like the parlor, the dining room was a family room for the Garfield’s, where everyone gathered to share meals and conversation. The space was added in the spring of 1880, as part of the major enlargement of the house that was not quite complete when the presidential campaign began. A reporter described it as the most colorful room in the Garfields’ home. Only one image of the dining room was drawn during the campaign. It shows the fireplace and china cupboards at the south end of the room, but few furnishings beyond the dining table and chairs. Not long after James Garfield won the Republican presidential nomination, he traveled to Washington, D.C. to gather papers from his home there. Mrs. Garfield, recognizing that much more entertaining would be done in Mentor than in Washington that summer and fall, asked that he collect a few things for her. “I would like too, if you can bring them easily, the fruit dish and the glass berry dish and the dessert plates of the china set. We shall find it very convenient many times to have the coffee urn.” Visitors came nearly every day during the campaign—old friends, college classmates, fellow veterans, party advisors. Most shared a meal with the family. “At the table,” Garfield’s friend A. F. Rockwell remembered, “the master of the house was the ruling spirit. Fun, fact, fancy, reminiscence, quotation, anecdote flowed from his lips in variety and profusion.” Imagine the candidate, at the head of the table, spelling words from a book called Three Thousand English Words Usually Mispronounced, and challenging his family and guests to pronounce them properly! On election night, when victory seemed assured, “about twenty-two were gathered round the tables which were set together in the form of a cross” for a celebration dinner. “The candles which have graced the mantle all summer were lighted in honor of Victory!” Interact with the image above or use the links below to learn more about the role of the campaign office |
Last updated: September 28, 2020