Editing James A. Garfield (section)

==Childhood and early life==
[[File:MorelandHillsGarfieldCabin.jpg|thumb|left|alt=A log cabin with a statue and a tree in front|Replica of the [[log cabin]] in [[Moreland Hills, Ohio]], where Garfield was born]]
James Abram Garfield was born the youngest of five children on November 19, 1831, in a log cabin in [[Orange Township, Cuyahoga County, Ohio|Orange Township]], now [[Moreland Hills, Ohio]].{{efn|Orange Township had been in the [[Western Reserve]] until 1800.}} Garfield's ancestor Edward Garfield migrated from [[Hillmorton]], [[Warwickshire]], England, to Massachusetts around 1630. James's father Abram was born in [[Worcester, New York]], and came to Ohio to woo his childhood sweetheart, Mehitabel Ballou, only to find her married. He instead wed her sister Eliza, who was born in New Hampshire. James was named after an earlier son of Eliza and Abram who had died in infancy.{{sfn|Peskin|1978|pp=4–6}}

In early 1833, Abram and Eliza Garfield joined a Stone-Campbell church, a decision that influenced their youngest son's life.{{sfn|Peskin|1978|pp=6–7}} Abram died later that year, and James was raised in poverty in a household led by his strong-willed mother.{{sfn|Peskin|1978|pp=8–10}} He was her favorite child and the two remained close for the rest of his life.{{sfn|Rutkow|2006|p=4}} Eliza remarried in 1842, but soon left her second husband, Warren (or Alfred) Belden, and a scandalous divorce was awarded in 1850. James took his mother's side in the matter and noted Belden's 1880 death with satisfaction in his diary.{{sfn|Peskin|1978|pp=10–11}} Garfield also enjoyed his mother's stories about his ancestry, especially those about his [[Welsh people|Welsh]] great-great-grandfathers and an ancestor who served as a knight of [[Caerphilly Castle]].{{sfn|Brown|1881|p=23}}
 
Poor and fatherless, Garfield was mocked by his peers and became sensitive to slights throughout his life; he sought escape through voracious reading.{{sfn|Peskin|1978|pp=10–11}} He left home at age 16 in 1847 and was rejected for work on the only ship in port in [[Cleveland, Ohio|Cleveland]]. Garfield instead found work on a canal boat, managing the mules that pulled it.{{sfn|Brown|1881|pp=30–33}} [[Horatio Alger]] later used this labor to good effect when he wrote Garfield's campaign biography in 1880.{{sfn|Rutkow|2006|p=10}}

After six weeks, illness forced Garfield to return home, and during his recuperation, his mother and a local school official secured his promise to forgo canal work for a year of school. In 1848, he began at [[Geauga Seminary]], in nearby [[Chester Township, Geauga County, Ohio]].{{sfn|Peskin|1978|pp=14–17}} Garfield later said of his childhood, "I lament that I was born to poverty, and in this chaos of childhood, seventeen years passed before I caught any inspiration{{spaces}}... a precious 17 years when a boy with a father and some wealth might have become fixed in manly ways."{{sfn|Peskin|1978|p=13}}