Here lived the Garfields for two generations.

Then Abram Garfield, the father of James, moved to Northeastern Ohio, and bought a tract of eighty acres, on which stood the log-cabin, built by himself, in which our story opens.

His wife belonged to a distinguished family of New England--the Ballous--and possessed the strong traits of her kindred.
But the little farm of eighty acres was smaller now.

Abram Garfield died in debt, and his wife sold off fifty acres to pay his creditors, leaving thirty, which with her own industry and that of her oldest son served to maintain her little family.
The school-house was so far away that Mrs.Garfield, who appreciated the importance of education for her children, offered her neighbors a site for a new school-house on her own land, and one was built.

Here winter after winter came teachers, some of limited qualifications, to instruct the children of the neighborhood, and here Jimmy enlarged his stock of book-learning by slow degrees.
The years passed, and still they lived in the humble log-cabin, till at the age of twenty-one Thomas came home from Michigan, where he had been engaged in clearing land for a farmer, bringing seventy-five dollars in gold.
"Now, mother," he said, "you shall have a framed house." Seventy-five dollars would not pay for a framed house, but he cut timber himself, got out the boards, and added his own labor, and that of Jimmy, now fourteen years old, and so the house was built, and the log-cabin became a thing of the past.