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November 2008 - Vol. 1 No. 8
Monmouth and the President: A brief
history
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Ronald Reagan spoke at MC during
the 1976 Republican primary elections. |
Over the years, four U.S. presidents have been among the
hundreds of distinguished visitors to Monmouth and Monmouth College.
Although none of them were sitting presidents at the
time of their visits, one spent more than a considerable amount of time
at Monmouth College. Ronald Reagan attended second and third grade in
Monmouth, and the Reagan home was on Seventh St., just two blocks south
of the college. The future sportscaster got his first taste of college
athletics as a member of the "Knothole Gang," hanging around the old
athletic park on 11th Street and peering through the wooden fence to
watch football. Although the Reagans left Monmouth shortly after World
War I, "Dutch" would return to Monmouth College many years later, as an
aspiring presidential candidate in the 1976 primaries. On Feb. 23, he
and his wife, Nancy, made a campaign stop at the college, where he spoke
to a huge crowd in the old college gymnasium.
The first future president to visit Monmouth did so
nearly 20 years before Monmouth College was founded. Abraham Lincoln was
a 25-year-old surveyor in October of 1834 when he traveled to the
courthouse at Monmouth in order to file a survey he had completed of the
village of New Boston. Nearly a quarter of a century later, Lincoln made
his only other visit to Monmouth, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in
his storied but unsuccessful campaign against Stephen A. Douglas. On the
damp, rainy afternoon of Oct. 11, 1858, Lincoln spoke for three hours at
Henry’s lumber yard in Monmouth. During that visit, he had his portrait
made at a studio on the Public Square. That original ambrotype,
considered by Lincoln’s son Robert the best likeness of his father
without a beard, now rests in the National Portrait Gallery in
Washington, D.C.
Also during that visit, Lincoln attended a reception at
the home of William Laferty, a Monmouth College trustee and president of
the First National Bank. According to the Historical and Biographical
Record of Monmouth and Warren County, edited by the late MC professor
Luther Robinson, the Laferty house (which was then located in the 200
block of East Broadway, but today stands in the 600 block of South 8th)
hosted another future president —one,
who like Lincoln—would later be assassinated. James A. Garfield, the
book asserts, once visited the house, but no date is given. Since
Laferty died in 1877, it was likely sometime during Garfield’s term in
Congress (1863-1880). Garfield assumed the presidency in 1881.
Many people reading this article vividly recall the most
recent presidential visit to Monmouth College. On May 14, 2000,
President George H.W. Bush delivered the commencement address to an
overflow crowd in front of Wallace Hall. Accompanied by his wife,
Barbara, Bush came into town the night before and stayed at Quinby
House. Early in the morning, he played a round of golf at Gibson Woods.
Among his partners was the late Jim Pate, the CEO of Quaker
State-Pennzoil. A 1963 MC graduate and trustee, Pate was Bush’s neighbor
in Houston, and invited him to speak at Monmouth College.
One of the reasons more presidents have not visited
Monmouth is undoubtedly because the town is located so near to the much
larger Galesburg. In fact, Galesburg has hosted 14 U.S. presidents, five
of whom were in office at the time of their visits. One recent sitting
president actually did come close to Monmouth. In August 1979, Jimmy
Carter vacationed with his family on the Delta Queen, taking it from
Minneapolis to St. Louis. Early in the morning of Aug. 22, the boat
docked near Gulfport and Carter got out to jog along the shore. Later
that morning, he made a public appearance in Burlington, Iowa.
Now that Barack Obama has been
elected the 44th president of the United States, Monmouth College can add another name to
its list of presidential visitors. In July 2004, Obama (then an Illinois
state senator)
spoke during a campaign visit to a large crowd in Dahl Chapel.
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