Owner Comments:
THERE IS NO CENSUS KEPT ON THIS MEDAL TYPE. I HAVE PERSONALLY ONLY SEEN TWO OTHERS, AND HAVE NEVER SEEN ANOTHER OF THIS TYPE GRADED. THE TWO DIE CRACKS RUNNING THROUGH THE CONE SHAPED ROOFTOP, AND THROUGH THE LETTER "E" IN MEMORIAL ON THE REVERSE WERE ALSO NOTED BY ME ON ONE OF THE OTHER EXAMPLES THAT I HAVE SEEN, SO THIS MUST BE CAUSED BY A DIE DEFECT.
PER JOHN RAYMOND, THERE ARE TWO VARIETIES, LARGE AND SMALL MIDDLE LETTER "E" IN CLEVELAND ON THE BOTTOM OF THE OBVERSE. THIS IS THE LARGE E TYPE. JOHN RAYMOND LISTS THAT THE LARGE E TYPE IS PROBABLY RARER. THIS MEDAL IS LISTED AS #263 IN JOHN RAYMOND'S LIST OF HK UNLISTED SO-CALLED DOLLARS.
James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881 until his death by assassination six and a half months later. He was the first sitting member of Congress to be elected to the presidency, and remains the only sitting House member to gain the White House.
Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881. After eleven weeks of intensive and other care Garfield died in Elberon, New Jersey, the second of four presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln.
Garfield was struck by two shots; one glanced off his arm while the other pierced his back, shattering a rib and embedding itself in his abdomen. "My God, what is this?" he exclaimed. Guiteau, as he was led away, stated, "I did it. I will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be President."
Garfield's funeral train left Long Branch on the same special track that brought him there, traveling over tracks blanketed with flowers and past houses adorned with flags. His body was transported to the Capitol and then continued on to Cleveland for burial.
On May 19, 1890, Garfield's body was permanently interred, with great solemnity and fanfare, in a mausoleum in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. Attending the dedication ceremonies were former President Hayes, President Benjamin Harrison, and future president William McKinley. Garfield's Treasury Secretary, William Windom, also attended. Harrison said that Garfield was always a "student and instructor" and that his life works and death would "...continue to be instructive and inspiring incidents in American history." Three panels on the monument display Garfield as a teacher, Union major general, and orator; another shows him taking the presidential oath, and a fifth shows his body lying in state at the Capitol rotunda in Washington.