Hayes Administration - Early Life
Early Life
On October 4, 1822, Sophia Birchard Hayes gave birth to a son whom she named after her recently deceased husband, Rutherford Hayes Jr. Her husband had been a successful store owner but contracted typhus and died the July before Hayes was born. As a baby, Hayes was so weak that his mother did not expect him to survive. To support the family including two other young children, she rented their farm for one-third of the crop and one-half of the fruit it produced, and her younger brother, Sardis Birchard, helped the family financially.
On January 20, 1825, Hayes's older brother, Lorenzo, fell through the ice while skating and drowned. This tragedy combined with the early death of Rutherford Jr. affected Hayes's mother in two ways: first, she consoled herself through religion and, second, she became extremely protective of her two remaining children, two-year-old Rutherford B. Hayes and his four-year-old sister, Fanny...
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