As I was driving north from Cincinnati, I had to think about how presidential I wanted to make my great escape. Many presidents are either from, or have a connection to Ohio. The state is called 'The Mother of Presidents' for good reason. Within an reasonable distance off my route, I had access to at least three more presidential tombs. Within an unreasonable distance (more than two hours), there were dozens of sites, if you include birthplaces, homes, and tombs. The two on my eye for that day were Warren Harding and Rutherford B. Hayes. There also is, however, a semi-suburb of Cincinnati that his been on my mind since my earliest days of history obsession: the small town of Hamilton, named after Alexander Hamilton himself.
Well, named after a fort named after THE Alexander Hamilton |
With limited time in a single day after having sluggishly made it out of Cincinnati around 10 am (I blame my bad habit of staying up until the wee hours reading), I had to pick and choose. With my skin curling at the thought of foregoing a visit town called Hamilton for the grave of one of my least favorite presidents, I made my way northwest toward Hamilton. After the visit, which perhaps I'll detail when my dream of visiting Hamilton's grave come to fruition, I had another two hours north toward my final destination of Detroit before I had to decide to turn right at Bowling Green and aim for Spiegel Grove. At the right time, the wind struck, and I pulled onto the Hayes property.
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The sky was gray and heavy, as if deeply contemplating a torrential downpour. I had never been to a presidential library before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. After scoping out the front of what clearly was the library, thanks to giant lettering atop, I had to figure out which the right door was. This building hosts the first ever presidential library, first opened in 1916, before the presidential library tradition was started by diligently scribbled plans of FDR. The museum's original entrance and lobby has now been reworked to constitute part of the museum itself, so you enter through the side door, which greets you with a gift shop from whence you can purchase tickets. Even though I had arrived an hour and a half before closing, I splurged my college budget on the museum and house tour, intending to conclude the day after the facilities closed at five, wandering the grounds. My tour started at 4, so I rushed through the museum, taking in as much as I could in such a short amount of time (some of which was wasted both finding and bathroom and trying to escape from the basement and make my way back into daylight after getting lost on the former). Some notable items in the collection that stuck out to me were Hayes' very simplistic coat and top hat, a ring containing the hair of George Washington, and a White House desk made out of old ship timber that was used by presidents for almost one hundred years after Hayes left office.
At 3:59, I ran out of the museum and across the yard to the Hayes House, where one other couple was sitting on the porch, looking out onto the grove that Hayes and his family had probably looked out on thousands of time, when our tour guide (shout out to Kevin the tour guide) opened up the large wooden doors and asked us to step inside. I won't say much about the tour inside the Spiegel Grove mansion in case you want to experience it yourself one day, but it reminded me very much of my own family's summer vacation home in the north. Granted, a three room cabin is a lot different from the thirty-one roomed presidential mansion, but it was almost as if the warm love of family and late nights surrounded by loved ones still filled the air.
As soon as I stepped outside after the tour, the sky began to leak onto me. It came slowly at first, and then more consistently. I had wanted to walk around the ground and see all they held, but the rain drove me on a path to the right straight toward the tomb. It is a short walk past the rose garden (though the roses weren't in bloom yet when I was there at the end of March) to the tomb, and you can still see the house from their final resting place. Some of the other Hayes family members are buried on the other side of town in a family cemetery plot, but Rutherford and his wife Lucy were reinterred here by their son, Webb Cook Hayes, not too long after death. I asked the tour guide about the burial and he told me a story about how the couple desired Spiegel Grove as their final place. I'll have to look up more about this because apparently after the reinternment their wedding rings went missing and then reappeared at the museum years and years later...
See the house here in the distance. |
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Webb Cook Hayes, who is a character unto himself with many stories to tell beyond having a president as a dad, and his wife Mary are buried directly behind mom and dad. Everything that I have read about Webb has amazed and entertained, so I surely will seek more stories. And as you know is the trend, when I have more stories, I will share with you all!
Based on the portraits hanging up inside the mansion, Webb Cook definitely could have won a Teddy Roosevelt look-alike contest, and at one point he kind of did... |
Hayes is buried on his family estate just outside of Fremont, Ohio. You can find more information about the property, Spiegel Grove, here and plan a visit yourself. I will warn you; you must be prepared to drive through hours of corn field purgatory in order to get here. But the relative seclusion is worth it!
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