leader
on the other side.

Lieutenant Thomas Garfield, another of the President's ancestors
in the direct line, built a house in that part of Watertown,
afterward Weston, which later still was incorporated with
parts of Concord and Lexington as the town of Lincoln. He
and his son Thomas were among the first incorporators, of
whom my great-grandfather, John Hoar, was also one. Thomas
Garfield built a house now standing at the end of a grass-
grown lane about forty rods from the high road leading from
Lincoln to Waltham and about two miles south from the centre
of Lincoln. It is a secluded spot of great beauty. The house,
a square, unpainted, two-story house with a great chimney
in the middle, stands surrounded by old elms and apple trees,
in a tract of fertile meadow, with the Lincoln hill in the
distance. This estate passed from Lieutenant Thomas Garfield
to his son Thomas, Jr., from him to his daughter Rebecca,
wife of David Fiske, from her to her son Elijah Fiske, and
from him to his children. One of these children married my
cousin. I attended the wedding in my boyhood in the old Garfield
house.

Abram Garfield, son of the second Thomas, the President's
great-uncle, from whom his middle name came to him, was a
soldier at Concord Bridge on the 19th of April, 1775, in the
Lincoln Company of which my grandfather, Samuel Hoar, was
Lieutenant and my two great-grandfathers served as privates.
The depositions of Abram Garfield and John Hoar as to the
facts of the Concord fight were taken with others by the patriots
and sent to England for their vindication. This Abram Garfield
died in the summer of 1775, a few months after the battle
at Concord. His grave, with that of his father and grandfather,
the President's direct ancestors, is close to the graves of
my own ancestors in the Lincoln burial-ground.

The President's great-grandfather settled in Westminster.
His land was close by the land of my wife's great-grandfather,
and not far from the spot where her father was born. His
house is still standing in Westminster. My grandfather's
uncle, Daniel Hoar, was one of the founders of that town and
owned land not far off.

So our friendship came by lawful inheritance. I discovered
myself many of these facts relating to his ancestry which
had been previously unknown to him. I have from him a letter
written the day before he was assassinated in which he promises
after visiting Williams College and the White