"As the last of the log cabin presidents, James A. Garfield attacked
political corruption and won back for the presidency a measure of
prestige it had lost during the Reconstruction period.
He was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on November 19, 1831. Fatherless at two,
he later drove canal boat teams, somehow earning enough money for an
education. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856, and
he returned to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College)
in Ohio as a classics professor. Within a year he was made its president.
Through his academic pursuits, he met fellow student Lucretia Rudolph, who
would become his wife in 1858. The Garfields went on to have seven children
together."
-https://www.whitehousehistory.org