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1036 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

morning of 2 July 1881 as he and several cabinet members waited to board a train at
the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad terminal in Washington, D.C. The assassin, a dis-
gruntled office seeker named Charles Guiteau, entered the station and fired two shots
at the president. One passed through his coat sleeve, but the second entered Garfield's
abdomen, mortally wounding him. The president was taken to the White House,
where he was attended by several doctors. In early September he was moved to the
New Jersey shore to escape the capital's late summer heat. On 19 September he died
from complications of the wound. Funeral services were held at the Capitol on 23
September, before the body was moved to Ohio for burial. New York Times, 3 July,
23 September 1881; Doenecke, Presidencies of Garfield and Arthur, 53-54.

481.4-5 Lake View cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio] Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery
was Ohio's first rural cemetery. It was founded in 1869 by Jeptha H. Wade and others
who believed that Cleveland should have a garden cemetery outside the city limits,
which would focus on natural beauty and have an atmosphere suggesting a park. Lake
View was established east of Cleveland and had a view of Lake Erie. Since Cleveland
already had specifically designated Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish cemeteries, Lake
View was designated as nonsectarian. Some of the dignitaries interred at Lake View
include John D. Rockefeller and President James A. Garfield. Marian J. Morton,
Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery (Charleston, S .C., 2004), 7-8.

481.8 Fifteenth street Presbyterian church] The Fifteenth Street Presbyterian
Church in Washington, D.C., was originally located in a schoolhouse owned by John
F. Cook on H Street near 14th Northwest. It was established in 1842 and was known
as the First Colored Presbyterian Church of Washington. Forty people originally wor-shiped there, but in 1853 they were joined by members from surrounding churches
such as the First, Second, and Fourth Presbyterian Churches. This increase enabled
the members to build a small frame church on Fifteenth Street, between I and K
Streets. The first pastor was John F. Cook, who was officially installed as minister in
1855. Following his pastorate, there were several temporary ministers who served two
or three years at most. From 1878 to 1885, Reverend Francis J. Grimke preached
there, and the church had a spiritual awakening. The Fifteenth Street Presbyterian
Church became well known before and after the Civil War as a place of public assem-bly and referendum. The building was sold in 1918, and the church was relocated to
a larger structure on R and Fifteenth Streets. H. W. Crew, Centennial History of the
City of Washington, D.C. (Dayton, Ohio, 1892), 565; John W. Cromwell, "The First
Negro Churches in the District of Columbia," JNH, 7:80-81 (January 1922).

481.12- 13 made the following ... and touching event] Douglass delivered this
eulogy for the assassinated President James A. Garfield at a memorial service on 26
September 1881 in Washington, D.C. Washington (D.C.) National Republican, 27
September 1881; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:35-37.

483.1 John Mercer Langston] John Mercer Langston (1829-97), educator, law-
yer, diplomat, and U.S. congressman, was born in Louisa County, Virginia, to a white
planter and his mistress, an emancipated slave of black and American Indian ancestry.

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