Rutherford B. Hayes’s father, Rutherford Hayes, worked as a farmer and merchant. The father also invested in a local distillery. Hayes’s father had moved his family to Ohio from Wilmington, Vermont, in 1817. Sadly, he died of malaria in 1822 two months before Rutherford B. Hayes was born. The widowed Sophia Birchard Hayes rented out the farmland and another house in the city for income.