NILES, Ohio – On Oct. 5, 1817, former U.S. President William Howard Taft, along with dozens of prominent business and political leaders from the Mahoning Valley, gathered in Niles to dedicate the opening of the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial, a national monument to William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States who was assassinated 16 years earlier.
Among the speakers that day was Youngstown industrialist Joseph G. Butler, McKinley’s boyhood friend and brainchild behind the elegant marble building, which today houses the McKinley Memorial Museum and Library. It was Butler’s influence that convinced Gilded Age financiers and business barons to contribute funds toward the construction of the memorial.
Butler and McKinley met in Niles as schoolboys and maintained a lifelong friendship, says Belinda Weiss, director of the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial Museum. “They met when they were about 7 years old in the little one-room schoolhouse,” she says. “That’s why Butler chose this site. It was nostalgic for him.”
McKinley was born in Niles on Jan. 29, 1843. He lived there until he was 9 but maintained his close friendship with Butler long afterward. “That friendship was a lifetime,” Weiss says. “One of the first things McKinley did when he was elected president was to send flowers to Butler’s mom, because he thought of her as a second mom. The families were very close.”
By the mid-19th century, both families were involved in the iron and steel industries, a pursuit that first attracted the McKinley family to Ohio.
Mercer, Columbiana Roots
The local trail of the McKinley family begins more than a century before the dedication. Not in Niles, but across the border, in the southeast corner of Mercer County, Pa., in Pine Township.
McKinley’s grandfather and grandmother settled there after the family moved from eastern Pennsylvania, and where in 1807, McKinley’s father, William McKinley Sr. was born. By the 1820s, however, the McKinley family relocated to Ohio and found opportunity in Columbiana County in the town of New Lisbon, today renamed Lisbon.
McKinley’s grandfather, James Stephenson McKinley, moved to New Lisbon to operate an iron furnace constructed in 1807 by Gideon Hughes.
“He was the iron master at the Gideon Furnace,” says Gene Krotky of the Lisbon Historical Society. “He had been a schoolteacher at one point.”
A stone house was built for Hughes, which would later be occupied by James McKinley and his family. Today, the site near Lisbon is in private hands and the original homestead is still intact. It was in New Lisbon that McKinley’s father met and married Nancy Allison in 1829.
Krotky relates a story during the 1890s when the local Presbyterian Church was undergoing renovations. William McKinley, at the time governor of Ohio, donated money to sponsor one of the stained-glass windows for the church in honor of his grandparents. “That window still exists in the church,” she says.
Coincidentally, the McKinley family lived in New Lisbon during the same period as Benjamin Hanna, who would emerge as a prosperous business owner of a general store. In 1837, his grandson, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, was born. In 1838, the family moved into a Federal-style house at 251 E. High St. The private dwelling, known as the Hanna-Kenty House, still stands today and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
Krotky says that while it’s likely the McKinley and Hanna families crossed paths in Lisbon, there is no evidence that William McKinley – on trips to visit his grandparents in Lisbon – knew Mark Hanna.
“There is probably a chance, but we cannot prove that the two boys ever knew each other as children,” she says.
By the 1850s, the Hannas had relocated to Cleveland after a failed canal venture. Years later, McKinley’s and Hanna’s connection would have a profound impact on the course of American politics.
Trumbull County
McKinley’s father struck out on his own shortly after marriage and moved the family to Niles, where he managed several iron furnaces across the region.
“They really were a typical, average family,” Weiss says. McKinley’s early days would be spent playing with friends, ice skating and fishing, for example, and playing games. “One of the games they liked to play was called Ducks on a Rock,” she says. The premise was to place smaller rocks on top of larger rocks, setting them up as targets. Then, the kids would hurl stones at the targets.
The museum holds artifacts related to his early days in Niles, Weiss says. Yet it also contains a wealth of information and items dedicated to McKinley’s entire life, including his experience in nearby Poland, Ohio, his service during the Civil War, his return to Ohio and law practice in Canton, and his entrance into politics.
McKinley’s birthplace was constructed sometime during the 1830s along Main Street in Niles, and the family rented the house until they moved in 1852. According to the Niles Historical Society’s website, the house was expanded to include a grocery store, but in 1890 the home was split in two – one half of it relocated to Riverside Park on Meander Creek while the other half was relocated to another lot in Niles to house a printing press manufacturer.
In 1909, both portions of the house were acquired by Lulu Mackey, who operated a museum on land that is today McKinley Heights in Weathersfield Township. The house was destroyed by fire in 1937.
A replica of McKinley’s birthplace stands at the original Main Street site today. The house is managed by the McKinley Memorial Library.
Mahoning Influence
The McKinley family relocated to Poland in 1852, relates Larry Baughman, a trustee for the Poland Historical Society, mostly because of the village’s superior school system. “There were a couple of different log schools that he could have gone to,” he says. “We’re not 100% sure which one.”
After primary school, McKinley attended Poland Seminary, then located on College Street, Baughman says. Only the foundation of the original building remains, he says, and the site is now home to the Poland Village Middle School at 47 College St. McKinley’s home in Poland – no longer standing but identified by an Ohio Historical Marker — stood at the intersection of South Main and College streets.
“He also worked at the post office and potentially the drug store,” Baughman says. Indeed, McKinley’s sister lived in the building, which still stands at 221 Main St.
Then, in April 1861, Confederate forces fired upon the Union installation at Fort Sumter, near Charleston, S.C., initiating the Civil War. McKinley’s family had long expressed abolitionist sympathies, and politically identified with the Whig and eventually Republican parties.
It was once widely accepted that McKinley and others mustered into the Union Army at the Old Stone Tavern, which still stands in the village, Baughman says. While some did, McKinley first informed his family of his intentions to join, and with their blessing, he enlisted in Columbus.
“We’ve since found out that he went to Youngstown, took a train to Cleveland, and then enlisted at Camp Chase in Columbus,” Baughman says.
McKinley served with distinction during the war, especially as a commissary soldier during the Battle of Antietam, earning the rank of major.
Upon his return, McKinley briefly taught school in Poland and dedicated a monument in 1865 to Civil War veterans in Riverside Cemetery, Baughman says. He then pursued a law degree at Albany, N. Y., his tuition financed by an old friend in Poland, a banker named Robert Walker, whose house still stands in Poland.
Once admitted to the bar, McKinley moved to Canton to practice law and begin an influential political career.
As McKinley rose to prominence in Ohio politics, he never lost touch with his Mahoning Valley roots, some of which would come back to haunt him.
In February 1893, McKinley (now an Ohio governor with an eye on the presidency) discovered that his old friend Robert Walker stood on the brink of bankruptcy. McKinley, in return for Walker’s largesse covering his law school expenses two decades earlier, co-signed a series of loans for his friend, not knowing that Walker was nearly insolvent. In the end, it left McKinley with potential liabilities of more than $100,000, far exceeding the governor’s assets.
McKinley’s powerful and wealthy friends stepped in. Industrialists such as Henry Clay Frick, Mark Hanna (now McKinley’s chief political adviser and multimillionaire Cleveland businessman) secured funds to bail the governor out.
Political opponents seized the moment, but were unable to derail McKinley’s political career, as he postured toward earning the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1896.
McKinley, running on a platform of protective tariffs, won the presidency that year against William Jennings Bryan. His first term was marked by seismic events – the Spanish-American War, the annexation of Hawaii, the Filipino Insurrection – and he was reelected in 1900.
“McKinley was actually quite progressive for the time period,” the McKinley Memorial Museum’s Weiss says, citing his devotion to women’s suffrage and a champion of minority rights. He really was the first modern president.”
The museum attracts interested guests from all over the world, she says. “We get people from all over the United States, and international visitors as well. The Netherlands, Philippines, Guam, Australia – and that’s been within the last couple weeks.”
McKinley was shot Sept. 6, 1901, by assassin Leon Czolgosz while attending the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, N.Y. He died eight days later.
Tragedy would have been averted had McKinley heeded the advice from an old friend from the Mahoning Valley – Joseph Butler, Weiss says.
“Butler was among the ones that urged him not to go to Buffalo,” Weiss says. “He had a bad feeling.”
Pictured at top: William McKinley.