 After six weeks , illness forced Garfield to return home and , during his recuperation , his mother and a local education official got him to promise to postpone his return to the canals for a year and go to school . Accordingly , in 1848 , he began at Geauga Seminary , in nearby Chester Township . Garfield later said of his childhood , " I lament that I was born to poverty , and in this chaos of childhood , seventeen years passed before I caught any inspiration ... a precious 17 years when a boy with a father and some wealth might have become fixed in manly ways . " 
