Visiting the birthplaces and resting places of Ohio’s Presidents
Sunday, June 12
Ohio calls itself the mother of presidents with seven having been born in the state. Ohio shares a claim to William Henry Harrison who was born in Virginia but lived in Ohio when he was elected president and is one of the five presidents whose tombs are located in the state. Four sites are in the southwest, four in the northwest, and four in the northeast.As residents of southern Ohio we had over the years visited William Henry Harrison’s tomb and Benjamin Harrison’s birthplace, both in the village of North Bend, and William Howard Taft’s birthplace in Cincinnati. All three sites are located in Hamilton County and were only a few miles from our home. William Henry Harrison was buried on a knoll on the family farm in 1841 while his grandson Benjamin had been born on the farm in 1833.The fourth southern Ohio president, Ulysses S. Grant, was born in neighboring Clermont County. We’d often pass by while driving along the Ohio River and always meant to visit his birthplace but had never gotten around to it and decided to make it our first stop on our tour of Ohio’s presidential sites.Grant was born in 1822 in Point Pleasant in a one-room house his father rented. U.S. 52 runs through the town which sits alongside the Ohio River at the mouth of Big Indian Creek. The family only lived in the house for one year before relocating to Georgetown, Ohio where Ulysses grew up.
The house has been disassembled, transported and reassembled several times. It has been transported on canal boats, train cars and trucks, toured the country, and spent many years at the fairgrounds in Columbus. A sign at the current site refers to it as the first presidential mobile home. It was relocated to Point Pleasant four months before the disastrous flood of 1937 but has been fully restored and stocked with period furniture and some artifacts from the Grant family.
Tuesday, June 14
We had eight sites to see in northern Ohio so our first stop was for donuts and coffee at Dunkin. I-71 took us north to U.S. 30 which took us to Canton. Our GPS eventually got us to the William McKinley National Memorial. The memorial sits atop a hill in Westlawn Cemetery with a wide staircase of 108 steps leading to the entrance. A sign in the parking area instructed visitors with mobility issues to see the attendant at the adjacent museum and library so we headed there.We opted to visit the museum before heading up to the memorial and started downstairs in an area called Discover World where we were greated by a lifesize Allosaurus and the fossilized skulls of a T. Rex and a Triceratops. These were followed by the skeleton of a mammoth, several skulls of other Ice Age mammals, and a small exhibit of live snakes, fish and small mammals called Ecology Island. Next up was the Science Demo Area, a room of interactive science exhibits with lots of lights, sounds and excited children.We rode the elevator up to the much quieter second floor which contained exhibits on the history of Stark County and several of the products produced there. One of the highlights was a demonstration where a single ordinary Hoover vacuum lifted a person in a chair with the power of its suction. Also on the second floor was the McKinley Gallery which featured exhibits and items from McKinley’s private and professional life as well as his time in the White House. Animatronic characters of William and Ida McKinley would speak on various topics controlled by buttons placed along the gallery.The McKinley Gallery led to the Street of Shops where the buildings started with the pioneering days and ended in the early 20th century. A large model railroad exhibit depicted sites the Pennsylvania Railroad served in Stark County.
Once finished at the museum we went to the ticket office and got a pass to use the parking lot at the top of the hill adjacent to the memorial as well as the code to use the elevator within the structure. The McKinleys are laid to rest in green granite sarcophogi beneath the dome. McKinley was shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York and died eight days later. He was the last president to have served in the Civil War, the last president of the 19th century and the first president of the 20th century.From Canton we headed over to Niles, Ohio near the Pennsylvania border. McKinley was born in Niles and his childhood home has been reconstructed at its original site on Main Street. A memorial with attached library and museum is on the next block north. We had spent more time than planned at the museum in Canton so we opted to forgo visiting inside the buildings in Niles and headed towards in Moreland Hills.James A. Garfield was born in what is now Moreland Hills outside Cleveland. He was the last president to be born in a log cabin. The original cabin is gone but a replica based on his description has been built near the original site. It sits alongside Som Center Road next to the village’s government buildings and is only open for tours on Saturdays. There is a display in the Village Hall but it closed for the day shortly before we arrived.Our final site for day one was Garfield’s tomb in Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland. While the cemetery is open until 7:30, the monument containg the tomb closed at 4:00 PM and we arrived a little before 6:00. Fortunately we had visited it before during a short trip to Cleveland in 1996. Garfield was shot just four months into his first term and died 79 days later from infection.
From Lakeview Cemetery we made our way south to Independence, Ohio where we stayed at a Comfort Inn and ate dinner at Denny’s.
Wednesday, June 15
After a light breakfast at the Comfort Inn we left Independence heading west towards Fremont, our first stop for the sites in the northwestern portion of the state. Traffic in the Cleveland area was not too heavy and we were in rural Ohio in short order taking Ohio 2 west. As residents of the Ohio Valley we enjoyed seeing the extremely flat lands south of Lake Erie. We were a bit too far south to see the roller coasters of Cedar Point from our route which swung south to bypass Sandusky. Just past Sandusky we turned on to U.S. 6 which took us to Fremont.Spiegel Grove was originally a 125 acre plot purchased by Rutherford B. Hayes’ uncle Sardis Birchard. Birchard had no children of his own and knowing that Hayes was going to be his heir, asked for his input on the construction and amenities of the house. The plot has been reduced to 25 acres with gardens and over 100 varieties of trees. Spiegel, German for mirror, was chosen for the estate’s name by Birchard who noticed the reflections of the trees in the puddles when it rained or the snow melted.The entrance to Spiegel Grove is through gates that came from the White House. When automobiles replaced horses and wider gates were needed in Washington, Hayes’ son Webb obtained the old gates from the government, a process that took seven years and two acts of congress. Webb Cook Hayes was instrumental in establishing the Hayes presidential library, the first of its kind. The library and museum are a short walk from the Hayes house.
At the museum we booked the first tour of the house which left us with enough time to visit the tomb of Rutherford and Lucy Hayes. Unlike the imposing monuments of McKinley and Garfield from the day before, the granite tombstone marking the graves sites in the open air on a small wooded knoll. The Hayes were originally buried in nearby Oakwood Cemetery but were re-interred at Spiegel Grove when the museum and library were built in 1915. Hayes’ son Webb and his wife Mary are buried behind the tomb.A pleasant stroll through the gardens took us to the verandah of the Hayes house for the tour. We were the only ones taking the early tour but that did not diminish the enthusiasm of our guide. Six rooms in the house have been restored and furnished as they were when the Hayes returned to Fremont from Washington. After a taste of the good life in the White House one of the first actions by the Hayes was having indoor plumbing installed as well as a telephone (Hayes was the first president to use a telephone while in office). We found our guide’s account of how Rutherford and Lucy got together to be quite charming.Fortunately for us the Hayes’ descendents continued living in the home well into the 1960’s so it had amenities like air conditioning and an elevator. The house was originally two stories but additions over the years resulted in its current state with 31 rooms and a four story walnut and butternut staircase leading to a rooftop lantern that lit the center of the house before electrification. The second floor hallway had portraits of family members through the years with the rooms left decorated as they had been when tours of the house began in 1966.
The museum had two floors of exhibits. The lower level contained artifacts from the early years through the Civil War. One room contained weapons dating from the Revolutionary War up to the Civil War. The upper level focused on Hayes’ campaign and presidency, the state of the nation during his term and life after politics. A bust of Hayes sat in the center of the rotunda (the original entrance to the museum and libary) flanked by the Presidents Gallery with artifacts from Washington, Lincoln and other chief executives, and the Hayes Family Gallery with items from Hayes’ children.From Fremont we followed a winding route through farmland and occaisional small towns to Blooming Grove. Warren G. Harding’s birthplace is marked by a plaque on the side of State Route 97 just east of Blooming Grove. The house Harding was born in is no longer standing and the site does not have parking. There was almost no traffic so we pulled onto the shoulder and took a couple of pictures. There is a second plaque at ground level, an American flag and a small amount of landscaping also marking the spot.We detoured farther east to Mansfield to eat lunch at the Buckeye Express Diner beside I-71. The diner sits atop a hill and has a steam locomotive, dining car and caboose sitting on a short stretch of railroad track. The decor in the diner is decidedly Ohio State Buckeye with several jabs at arch-rival Michigan throughout. We ate in the dining car. The food was good but the day had gotten very hot and the air conditioning was hard-pressed to keep up.
Next on our route was the Harding Memorial in Marion. Again our route ran us through a lot of farmland. Harding and his wife Florence are entombed in sarcophogi in a circular ring of white marble columns under the open sky. The memorial sits on Delaware Avenue just south of Marion Cemetery. Harding’s was the last of the elaborate presidential tombs which started with Lincoln’s in Springfield, Illinois.Our final destination was a few miles south of Marion in Delaware, the geographic center of Ohio. Rutherford B. Hayes was born in Delaware on what is now East William Street. Hayes’ birthplace, like Harding’s and Benjamin Harrison’s, is a historical marker alongside the road. The site is now a BP gas station.From Delaware we continued south through Columbus and down I-71 to home. After our late lunch and dealing with the heat we opted to go straight home but to keep tradition intact we boiled some spaghetti and opened a can of Skyline Chili for dinner.
Milestones and highlights:
We have now visited all the presidential birthplaces and resting places in the state.
States and provinces we visited:
Ohio.
Capital cities we saw:
Coluumbus.
