The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site continues to be privately funded, owned, and operated for the public good. The bulk of Harrison’s presidential papers reside in the Library of Congress, but the BHPS maintains a vast assortment of materials relating to his early career and retirement at no public cost, for the public good.
There are thirteen Presidential libraries. FDR established the first, Hoover built his later, and since then every former Executive has received a publicly-maintained library. Until 1978, Presidential papers were regarded as the personal property of the President, and individual Executives disposed of their papers as each saw fit.
The National Parks Service owns and operates museums for five of the eleven presidents who served while General Harrison was in politics: Andrew Johnson, James A. Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft. Abraham Lincoln’s papers reside at a Presidential Library and Museum that the State of Illinois owns and operates. Mississippi State University hosts the Grant library, and the Ohio Historical Society has a library for Rutherford Hayes, the oldest of its kind. William McKinley’s home in Canton, Ohio burned in 1937, but the Stark County Historical Society reestablished a museum on the site. Chester Arthur has no memorial; his home in New York City houses a Mediterranean grocery store and three floors of private apartments.
The Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, and McKinley papers all reside at the various museums listed above. Grover Cleveland donated his papers to Princeton University, and Roosevelt’s ended up at Harvard. Harrison’s papers are split between the Library of Congress and the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site. Chester Arthur, a famously private man, burned many of his papers. The rest reside in the Library of Congress, along with the Johnson, Garfield, and Taft collections.
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