As the campaign continued the family ultimately decided to stay in Mentor as opposed to returning to Washington. Garfield continued to run his front-porch campaign well into the fall season of that year. Garfield ended up being in the campaign office on November 2, 1880, when he found out that he had won the vote for New York, ultimately giving him a total number of votes to win the election. The Garfield family then stayed in the home throughout the winter of that year, spending what ended up being the only Christmas together as a whole family in the Mentor home. Garfield reflects in his diary about this time in the home and what the future may hold, “I close the year with a sad conviction that I am bidding good-by to the freedom of private life, and to a long series of happy years, which I fear terminate with 1880.” | Date: 1881 | Source: National Park Service Download Original File
