FIRST LADY LUCRETIA R. GARFIELD - THIRD PERSON AUTOGRAPH LETTER 09/15/1893 - HFSID 86097

LUCRETIA R. GARFIELD. Black-bordered Third Person ALS (twice): "Mrs. Garfield", 1p, 4½x6½. Mentor, Ohio, 1893 September 15. President Garfield's widow writes, in full: "Mrs. Garfield has ordered from Mr. Edward Bierstadt a large copy of his photograph of General Garfield to be sent to care of Mr. Chas. L.M. Reese, Indianapolis, for the Ætna Life Insurance Co. Mrs. Garfield requests that she be notified when the copy is received." EDWARD BIERSTADT(1824-1906), older brother of painter Albert Bierstadt, was a noted portrait photographer who opened his first photography studio in New York in 1860. The Ætna Life Insurance Company was incorporated in Connecticut in 1853. Just weeks before taking office, President-elect Garfield had taken out a life insurance policy for $25,000 with his wife as beneficiary. An act signed March 31, 1882 by President Arthur directed the Secretary of the Interior to place the names of Mrs. Garfield and the widows of Presidents Tyler and Polk "on the pension roll and pay each of them a pension during their respective natural lives at a rate of $5,000 a year from and after the 19th day of September 1881", the day President Garfield died. On July 27, 1882, Congress passed an act awarding Mrs. Garfield the sum of $50,000. Lucretia Rudolph Garfield, who always referred to her late husband as "General Garfield", his Civil War rank, never as "President Garfield", died in 1918 at the age of 85. Lightly soiled.