Did You Know #42

He was the last U. S. President to be born in a log cabin. He was assassinated. He was a professor, a Civil War general, a congressman from Ohio (for 18 years), and he was a preacher. And, he is Dad's 14th cousin (3 times removed).

James A. Garfield was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on November 19, 1831. He was elected the 20th U. S. President in 1880, but he would never complete his first term. Garfield's life would be cut short by an assassin's bullets. "On July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular post shot the President." [1]

Over the coming weeks President Garfield languished in the White House as frustrated doctors searched and searched for the bullet lodged in his body. Famous inventor Alexander Graham Bell put together a metal detector in a fruitless attempt to locate that bullet. [2] However, the probing of unwashed fingers and instruments caused Garfield to develop infections and ultimately his death on September 19, 1881. [3]

So how exactly is the relationship of our Bragg family and President Garfield? The table below illustrates that connection:

Edward Tyrrell and Anne Pashley [4]
Philippa , Heir Tyrrell b.1425	Anne Tyrrell b.1432
Sir William Cornwallis b.1460	Jacquet St. Leger b.1466
Sir John Cornwallis b.1485	Elizabeth Fortescue b.1503
Margaret (Mary) Cornwallis b.1506	John Hare b.1526
John , of Nayland Warren b.1525	Elizabeth Hare b.1555
John Warren b.1552	Richard Ward b.1575
John Warren b.1585	Gov. Andrew Ward 4 b.1597
Mary Warren b.1624	Esther Ward b.1623
Samuel Bigelow b.1653	Daniel Burr b.1660
Martha Mercy Bigelow b.1686	Elizabeth Burr b.1696
Thomas Garfield, Jr. b.1713	Nathaniel Hull b.1726
Solomon Garfield b.1743	Ezekiel Hull b.1765
Thomas Garfield2 b.1773	Platt Hull b.1787
Abraham Garfield b.1799	Ezekiel Hull b.1813
James Abram Garfield b.1831	Rebecca L. Hull b.1841
	Frank Martin Bragg b.1867
	Orval Bishop Bragg b.1895
	Don Cicero Bragg b.1920

Notes:

[1]  The White House [http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesgarfield]

[2] Rick Beyer, The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told, Collins, New York, 2007, 100.

[3]  Rick Beyer, The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told, Collins, New York, 2007, 101, in fact, assassin Charles "Guiteau used their incompetence as the centerpiece of his defense, saying he didn’t kill Garfield; “The doctors did that.  I simply shot at him.”"

[4]  The PEDIGREE of Anne PASHLEY [http://fabpedigree.com/s055/f082755.htm] suggests that Anne Pashley was possibly direct ancestor of Prince Charles (15th Great-grandmother), his late ex-wife, Lady Diana (15th Great-grandmother), and Winston Churchill (14th Great-grandmother).