James Abram Garfield was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on November 10th, 1831. A graduate of Williams College in 1856, he taught classics and became president of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, later Hiram College, in Ohio. Elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859, he organized the 42nd Ohio Infantry in August 1861. In 1862 he gained national notice after General Don Carlos Buell appointed him commander of the 18th Brigade, and he led his vastly outnumbered troops to victory at Middle Creek against Confederate forces under General Humphrey Marshall. With headquarters in Pikeville for several weeks, he also led Union forces to victory at Pound Gap and was sworn in as brigadier general by Squire John Charles at Ratliff Tavern, the present location of Pikeville City Park. Later, as the youngest major general in the Union army, he fought at Shiloh and Chickamauga. After resigning his commission in December 1863, he ran for Congress as an Ohio Republican and served for 18 years. He returned to the Big Sandy Valley in 1871 to revisit his victories. Elected president in 1880 after defeating Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, Garfield did much to re-establish the prestige of an office that had been diminished during the Civil War reconstruction years. Shot at the Washington railroad station by an embittered office seeker on July 21, 1881, he suffered for many weeks before dying of blood poisoning on September 19, 1881, and was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.