When the three-time Governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes, ran for president in 1876, none other than Mark Twain campaigned for him.
Hayes lost the popular ballot by 250,000 votes but managed to squeak out a 185 to 184 electoral college victory.
According to his official White House biography, as the 19th president of the United States, Hayes oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War.
President Hayes promised to serve only one term, and he kept his promise. When he died in 1893, one of his sons, Col. Webb C. Hayes, set about opening a museum and library as a memorial to his dad, making President Hayes’s papers available to the public for study.
The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museum (HPLM), located on the family’s 25-acre estate in Fremont, Ohio, about a 45-minute drive southeast of Toledo, became America’s first presidential library and a forerunner for the federal presidential library system.
The smiling gentleman pictured here, Dustin McLochlin, PhD, enjoys the privilege of serving as the curator of the HPLM. The library’s mission is to illuminate the lives, legacy, and era of President Hayes and First Lady Lucy Hayes, and relate the Hayes presidency to modern America.
Whether in Villa Hayes, an industrial city in Paraguay named for the President, or Hayes County, Nebraska (also named for the 19th president), where General George Custer once served as the guide to Grand Duke Alexis of Russia on a buffalo hunt, professional We Believe in Smiles™ photographers span the globe in search of radiant, life-affirming smiles.
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Photography by Avital portrait first posted online on November 2019. ©2019 We Believe in Smiles.™ All rights reserved. To inquire about purchasing or leasing a photo canvas of this or any other WBIS photograph for your office or home, phone 844-228-4825.