History
Before the advent of the Presidential library system, Presidents or their heirs often dispersed Presidential papers at the end of the administration. Though many pre-Hoover collections now reside in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, others are split among other libraries, historical societies, and private collections. However, many materials have been lost or deliberately destroyed.
Lucretia Rudolph Garfield, the wife of James A. Garfield, President from March 4, 1881 until his death on September 19, 1881, added a Memorial Library wing, four years after his assassination, to their family home, Lawnfield, in Mentor, OH. James A. Garfield NHS is operated by the National Park Service and the Western Reserve Historical Society.
Read more about this topic: Presidential Library
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)