Charles J. Guiteau

Charles Julius Guiteau (/ɡᵻˈtoʊ/; September 8, 1841 – June 30, 1882) was an American writer and lawyer who was convicted of the assassination of James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States. Guiteau was offended by Garfield's rejections of his various job applications, and so shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881. Garfield died two months later from infections related to the injury. Guiteau was hanged for the crime.

Early life and education

Guiteau was born in Freeport, Illinois, the fourth of six children of Jane August (née Howe) and Luther Wilson Guiteau, whose family was of French Huguenot ancestry. He moved with his family to Ulao, Wisconsin (now Grafton, Wisconsin) in 1850 and lived there until 1855, when his mother died. Soon after, Guiteau and his father moved back to Freeport.

He inherited $1,000 from his grandfather as a young man and went to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in order to attend the University of Michigan. Due to inadequate academic preparation, he failed the entrance examinations. Despite cramming in French and algebra at Ann Arbor High School, during which time he received numerous letters from his father concerning his progress, he quit and in June 1860 joined the utopian religious sect known as the Oneida Community, in Oneida, New York, with which Guiteau's father already had close affiliations.