HAYES

Rutherford B. Hayes was the nineteenth President of the United States. He served from 1877 to 1881. He was born October 4, 1822 in Delaware, Ohio. His father had died three months before his birth, but had left Hayes’s mother well off. He graduated first in his class from Kenyon College in 1842, and went on to law school at Harvard, graduating in 1845. He began to practice law in Fremont, Ohio, then moving to Cincinnati in 1849. Hayes gained notice defending fugitive slaves and became friends with people who founded the Republican Party in Ohio. He married Lucy Webb in 1852, who would become the first college, educated First Lady, having graduated from Wesleyan Female College in Ohio. Together they had eight children, of whom five four sons and a daughter survived to adulthood. In 1858, the City Council of Council of Cincinnati appointed him City Solicitor to fill a vacancy. He ran and won in 1859, but was defeated in 1861. He then helped organize the 23rd Ohio volunteers and was commissioned as a Major. The regiment joined the fighting in West Virginia and he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, then Colonel.