Lucretia was the center of Garfield’s world. They had met thirty years earlier, while attending the same rural school in Ohio when he was nineteen and she was eighteen. Like Garfield’s mother, Lucretia’s parents were determined that their children would receive a good education. Her father, Zeb Rudolph, was a farmer and carpenter, but he was also one of the founders of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. When the school opened in 1850, he enrolled Lucretia in its first class, watching with pride as she edited the school magazine, helped to start a literary society, and studied Latin with a
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