Lucy Webb Hayes

                    Lucy Webb was born in a small frame house  on August 28, 1831, in Chillicothe, Ohio.  She was the third child of Dr. James and Maria Cook Webb.  Lucy descended from seven veterans of the American Revolution.  Her father passed away when she was just a child.

                    Lucy met Rutherford B. Hayes in 1847 and later that same year enrolled at Wesleyan Women's College (now Ohio Wesleyan University).  She graduated with the class of 1850.  Hayes was practicing law in Cincinnati by the time Lucy graduated, and he proposed in June 1851.

                    Rutherford was 30 years old and Lucy was 21 years old when they married on December 30, 1852, at the Cincinnati, Ohio, home of the bride's mother.  The wedding was performed by Dr. L.D. McCabe of Delaware, and the newlyweds honeymooned at the home of the groom's sister and brother-in-law in Columbus, Ohio.

                    Lucy and Rutherford became parents of eight children, with four sons and one daughter living to maturity.

 1) Sardis Birchard Hayes (1853-1926; known as "Birchard Austin"; lawyer):  He was born in Cincinnati, and graduated from Cornell University in 1874 and Harvard Law School in 1877.  He settled in Toledo, Ohio, and was a prosperous real estate and tax attorney.

2) James Webb Cook Hayes (1856-1934; businessman, soldier):  He was born in Cincinnati and graduated from Cornell University, after which he became presidential secretary to his father.  In later years he helped to start a small business that grew into Union Carbide.  He was commissioned a major and served in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.)

3) Rutherford Platt Hayes (1858-1931; library official):  He was born in Cincinnati, attended the University of Michigan, graduated from Cornell University in 1880, and did post-graduate work at Boston Institute of Technology. Although he worked for a time as a bank clerk in Fremont, Ohio, he devoted his life to promoting libraries.  He was also instrumental in developing Asheville, North Carolina, into a health and tourist resort.

4) Joseph Thompson Hayes (1861-1863).

5) George Crook Hayes (1864-1866).

6) Frances Hayes-Smith (1867-1950; known as "Fanny"):  Born in Cincinnati, she was educated at a private girls' school in Farmington, Connecticut.  In 1897 she married Ensign Harry Eaton Smith of Fremont, Ohio, later an instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy.

7) Scott Russell Hayes (1871-1923; businessman):  He was born in Cincinnati and was still a youngster while his father was President.  When he was six, he and his sister played host to other Washington-area children in the first Easter egg roll conducted on the White House lawn.  He became an executive with railroad service companies in New York City.

8) Manning Force Hayes (1873-1874).

                    Mrs. Hayes was the first First Lady to graduate from college.  She was also the first presidential wife to be referred to by the press as the First Lady.

                    Lucy was known for her kindness, great moral courage, and earnest religious convictions, and she staunchly supported the temperance movement.  There is some question about who was responsible for the decision to not serve alcohol in the White House.  One source reports that President Hayes banned alcohol from the White House, and other sources say that Mrs. Hayes discouraged the use of alcohol.  I suppose we can say that Mrs. Hayes was known for her zeal for temperance and supported her husband's ban.  The Hayes served no alcohol at state functions except for the wine that was served at the reception for Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia in 1877.  The lack of alcohol apparently didn't effect the official receptions because the social functions at the White House were considered to be popular.  Historians bestowed the derisive title of "Lemonade Lucy" upon Mrs. Hayes even though no one referred to her by that nickname while she lived.  A full-length portrait of Lucy hangs in the White House, being commissioned by the Women's Christian Temperance Union in gratitude for her policy about alcohol.

                    Mrs. Hayes was a vigorous opponent of slavery and contributed greatly to her husband's decision to abandon the Whig Party and move to the antislavery Republican Party.  She visited her husband in the field during the American Civil War and helped to establish the state Home for Soldier's Orphans at Xenia, Ohio, while he was governor of Ohio. 

                    Lucy was a devout Methodist and joined her husband in saying prayers before breakfast and hosting cabinet and congressmen on Sunday evenings to sing hymns.

                    President and Mrs. Hayes celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary while living in the White House and took this opportunity to renew their marriage vows in a ceremony there.  Many of the same guests who attended the original marriage ceremony in Cincinnati were in attendance at the renewal event.

                    The Hayes family left the White House in 1881 and moved to Spiegel Grove in Fremont, Ohio.  Lucy died of a stroke on June 25, 1889, and was buried at Spiegel Grove.  Flags across the United States were lowered to half-staff in honor of the "most idolized woman in America." 

                   

Greatness of Rutherford B. Hayes

                    Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born October 4, 1822 and died January 17, 1893.  He served as President of the United States from 1877 until 1881.  Reconstruction ended and the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States began during the Hayes Administration.  President Hayes was a reformer, and he started the country moving towards reform of the civil service.  He also attempted to reconcile the divisions in the nation that led to the American Civil War. 

                    The 1876 presidential election was "one of the most contentious and hotly disputed elections in American history.  Although he lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Hayes won the presidency by the narrowest of margins after a Congressional commission awarded him twenty disputed electoral votes.  The result was the Compromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes' election and Hayes accepted the end of military occupation of the South."   President Hayes "believed in meritocratic government, equal treatment without regard to race, and improvement through education."  

                    President Rutherford B. Hayes was in the news recently when Barack Obama took aim at him and Rick Moran wrote about the incident.  Moran wrote that our Progressive President Obama quoted President Hayes as saying, "One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone:  `It's a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'  Then Obama said, "That's why he's not on Mt Rushmore.  He's looking backwards, he's not looking forward.  He's explaining why we can't do something instead of why we can do something…. The point is there will always be cynics and naysayers."

                    Moran then wrote that Nan Card, the curator at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, corrected Obama.  She said that Hayes was delighted with the "magic of the telephone".  According to the curator, President Hayes was the "first president to have a telephone in the White House" and "the first to use the typewriter".  He also invited Thomas Edison to "come to the White House to demonstrate the phonograph".  Obama not only bad-mouthed a Republican predecessor, but he did so with a lie.

                    Mark Steyn wasn't all that impressed with Obama's knowledge of history or his ability to look forward.  "But obviously Rutherford B. Hayes isn't as `forward-looking' as a 21st-century president who believes in Jimmy Carter malaise, 1970s Eurostatist industrial policy, 1940s British health-care reforms, 1930s New Deal-sized entitlements premised on mid-20th-century birth rates and life expectancy, and all paid for by a budget with more zeroes than anybody's seen since the Weimar Republic.  If that's not a shoo-in for Mount Rushmore, I don't know what is."

                    After Rutherford B. Hayes was in the news I decided to look for ways that he was a great President and found some of his quotes.  His quotes make him sound conservative and willing to make the tough decisions for the good of the country.

                    "Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt.  It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times."  [Oh, if only our nation and its citizens had followed his counsel!]

                    "Conscience is the authentic voice of God to you."  [He obviously was a believer in God!]

                    "The President of the United States should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves his country best."  [I believe that there would be less of a divide in our nation if President Obama and all of our politicians put the good of the country before what their party.]

                    "To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible."  [In order to have a government of the people, for the people and by the people, WE THE PEOPLE must fulfill our duty to vote.]     

          

                    "Wars will remain while human nature remains.  I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier's occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone."  

                    "We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects.  It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties.  We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion both suffer by all such interference."  [First Amendment - Freedom of Religion]

                    "It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriation for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution."  [The entire Obama Administration would be prosecuted!]

                    "The only road, the sure road to unquestioned credit and a sound financial condition is the exact and punctual fulfillment of every pecuniary obligation, public and private, according to its letter and spirit."  [He believed in living within our means - individuals, counties, states and nations.]