The State of Ohio has a long history of producing Presidents of the United States. In fact, Ohio is tied at the top of the list with the State of Virginia in that regard with eight presidents each. Although William Henry Harrison was not born in Ohio, he had adopted Ohio as his home when he was elected. The others, all born in Ohio, were Ulysses S Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding. Since this writer was raised in Canton, Ohio, home of William McKinley, our 25^th President, this article will feature Ida Saxton McKinley.

As grade-schoolers my brother, sister & I spent many a day at McKinley Monument in Monument Park, Canton, Ohio, which was not far from our house. Those were the days when children could safely be out of their parents’ sight and we spent most of our non-school days somewhere that often neither Mom nor Dad ever knew.

Now part of the McKinley National Memorial, the monument building stands high atop a hill created during its construction after his death in 1901 by the addition of 35,000 cubic yards of soil sculpted into four terraces with 108 steps leading to the monument itself. We spent hours running up those steps and rolling down the hill until we could no longer stand up. The complex today includes the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum.

Ida Saxton, born June 8, 1847, was the daughter of a successful property owner and banker at the Stark County Bank that he established in Canton, and the granddaughter of the founder of the local newspaper, The Canton Repository, which is still being published today. Her mother was highly educated, having attended two boarding schools, and was a strong advocate of equal higher education for women.

Ida attended Canton Union School then followed her previous principal and teacher to Delphi Academy in New York where she had transferred. This principal and teacher, Betsy Cowles, had founded the Ohio Women’s Rights Association as well as the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society in Canton, and became one of Ida’s mentors, heavily influencing her. From Delphi it was on to The Sanford School in Cleveland, Ohio, and then to Brooke Hall Female Seminary in Media, Pennsylvania. The latter was more of a finishing school where Ida learned the aspects of social etiquette and what was perceived at the time as the necessities required to manage a prosperous household. Included was instruction in singing, fine needlepoint, linguistics, and mastering at least one musical instrument. Ida developed her previous skills on the piano, and while there also developed a passion for attending concerts, opera and the theater. Encouraged by her teacher and friend, Harriet Gault, who believed that women should be as physically active as men, Ida took vigorous long daily hikes too.

Upon her graduation, Ida, now 21, worked for her father as a clerk, then a cashier, and was occasionally entrusted with management of the bank when her father was out of town. This position conjured up local disapproval, especially from the all-male staff of the bank that felt she was an over-educated female and out of her element. Ida taught Sunday school at the First Presbyterian Church and helped her grandfather, who had established the church, in his visits to indigents, the housebound and the ill by providing food, comfort and monetary assistance.

From June to December 1869 Ida and her sister, Mary, took a chaperoned grand tour of Europe. Her father paid the expenses for Canton schoolteacher, Jeanette Alexander, to chaperone the group through Ireland, Scotland, England, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Ida demonstrated her talents for managing money and converting all the various currencies. She also developed empathy for working women there performing manual labor for menial wages to support themselves, especially the women of Belgium who handcrafted the lace for which the country is known. Ida purchased large amounts of their work, and thus began her lifelong collection. Her letters home described visiting castles, museums, and bargain hunting, but also mentioned the onset of migraine-like headaches. While on the trip Ida received the news by mail that her fiance, Confederate Army Major John Wright, had died.

Upon her arrival back home, Ida resumed her work at the bank, as well as an active social life, becoming quite a belle with beautiful blue eyes and auburn hair. Early in 1870 a man named William McKinley, President of the YMCA, gave an introduction to lecturer and political activist Horace Greely, and Ida was impressed with McKinley’s eloquent introduction and his apparent values. McKinley later became Stark County Prosecutor, and Ida’s father hired him to pursue claims on his behalf at which McKinley was successful.

Ida Saxton became Ida Saxton McKinley on January 25, 1871 in the first wedding ceremony to be held at the First Presbyterian Church her father and grandfather had helped to build. The ceremony was officiated jointly by Ida’s Presbyterian minister and William’s Methodist minister. The couple honeymooned on the East Coast, then returned to Ida’s father’s house in Canton that they leased.

Their first child, Katherine (Katie) was born there on the couple’s first Christmas together. Their second child, Little Ida, born April 1, 1873, lived only four and a half months. Two years later Katie became ill and died. Ida began suffering severe headaches, depression, and seizures. She was placed under the care of Philadelphia neurologist Silas Mitchell, who had developed the "rest cure" for women with problems of both physical and emotional natures. It was his belief that women’s brains were incapable of coping with difficult issues, so he forced them into a sedentary lifestyle. In Ida McKinley’s case, as we know today, such dictated inactivity may have been what led to chronic phlebitis later.

Following his election to the US House of Representatives, in 1877 William went alone to Washington, DC, while Ida rested. But Ida did not want to become an invalid. She knew the difficulty she was causing her husband, and worked diligently to improve her situation. She eventually was able to travel with him, and by 1880 had assumed a prominent role as a congressional spouse by helping place women who needed to support themselves into federal jobs.

The couple was seldom apart, as William kept the door between the parlor, where Ida sat and knitted, and his office open in their hotel suite. She therefore became privy to even his most confidential meetings. She was particularly helpful in promoting the protectionist tariff on which William was building a national reputation. The Congressman refused to leave her side when she was ill, as she frequently was, and his constituents began thinking of him as saint-like and sacrificial, a model of compassion.

William McKinley was elected Ohio's governor in 1891. The couple took lodging opposite the State House in Columbus. William never left his wife unattended, but when he went to the office across the street, he signaled Ida each afternoon at 3pm. She in turn would wave her handkerchief at him. Among his accomplishments while governor were improving the tax system, passage of a railroad safety law, establishment of a state board of arbitration for labor disputes, and he also was forced to deal with a coal miners' strike.

During their four years in Columbus, Ida’s health seemed to improve. She became more active socially, entertained more, and she stood in reception lines as long as she could. They went to concerts, operas, and plays. At home they played cribbage.

To celebrate their 25^th wedding anniversary Ida planned a large party, inviting way too many people for their house to accommodate, so they entertained their guests in two sessions. Ida managed successfully to host 600 people over a period of 6 hours. William McKinley served two terms as Governor of Ohio.

In 1896 when he was campaigning for the presidency, his staff organized a Women’s McKinley Club in Canton, and produced campaign buttons with Ida’s picture on them, also distributing a romanticized biography of her. These actions were taken to counteract brutal accusations aimed at both Ida and her husband during a nasty campaign. Front Porch Campaigns, where politicians addressed visitors from their own front porches, were the norm during that period. Few visitors during these gatherings saw Ida, for she had begun having recurring seizures. At this time in history, seizures were associated with mental illness. The biography was to counteract such rumors. William’s marital devotion was used to appeal to the mostly male voters, since women’s suffrage was not yet universal.

William was elected to the Presidency in 1896. Previous First Ladies with medical problems usually remained at home out of the limelight, but Ida intended to enjoy her time as First Lady. Consequently after a day filled with inaugural activities, and having pushed herself greatly, she ‘fainted,’ as her seizures were often labeled, while leading the Grand March. Aides moved her to a cloakroom, and when she came to they took her to the White House.

The White House staff became adept at handling situations when Ida suffered seizures too and carefully assisted her out of the room and took her upstairs. At state receptions, Ida usually sat in a chair and nodded to the dignitaries that her husband introduced to her. At dinners, the President, contrary to the custom of having dignitaries sit next to the President, insisted on Ida occupying one of the chairs at his side so he could cover her face with a handkerchief if she had a seizure. Seizure completed, he would simply remove the handkerchief and continue his conversations as if nothing had happened. On occasion, she augmented her presence at public social events in the White House with social aides who included one of several nieces, her sister Mary and Jennie Hobart, the wife of the Vice President.

While in the White House, Ida was treated by a series of surgeon generals in an effort to get her seizures under control. At one point William was receiving unregulated dosages of bromides, which did stop the seizures, but ended up causing more serious medical problems such as depression and headaches. Only one physician, Preston Rixey, succeeded in diminishing the frequency of Ida’s seizures, and that was accomplished by strict regulation of her schedule and her nutrition.

Ida received friends and official visitors both mornings and afternoons in her own reception room at the White House. She and William frequently had guests for their 1:00 luncheon, and once she held a reunion of her classmates from Brooke Hall. Still, she went out less often than previous first ladies and spent much of her time alone reading, knitting or crocheting thousands of pairs of leather-soled slippers for soldiers, orphans, and widows or for auctioning to benefit charities. She sent flowers from the White House greenhouse every Sunday to the Metropolitan Church requesting that they be sent to invalids or hospital patients after the service.

Because of her love of music and theater, Ida McKinley sponsored numerous unique musical events at the White House and initiated the practice of providing entertainment to guests after formal dinners. She was responsible for the introduction of the popular new genre of ragtime for the first time at the White House.

Ida slowly began influencing the President by assisting him in early drafts of his speeches and providing her input on the character of those persons attempting to obtain appointments. The couple was able to exchange ideas privately during their daily carriage rides around town. After the explosion of the USS Maine in the harbor at Havana, Cuba, and the United States’ Declaration of War against Spain, her favorable opinion of her physician, US Army surgeon Leonard Wood, was influential in his being named Colonel of the famous Rough Riders who fought Spanish troops in Cuba. When Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt was trying to get authorization to transfer the Rough Riders from San Antonio, Texas, to ships in Florida to embark for Cuba, Ida managed to influence the deployment. During the War, she and the President both visited several large military training camps in the United States.

Ida lobbied William to retain the Philippines as US territory after the War, and supported and facilitated the appointment of a woman to the American delegation at the Paris Exposition. She refused to let the Women’s Christian Temperance Union force her into eliminating alcohol from White House activities. Ida became an acquaintance of Susan B. Anthony, strongly supporting women’s right to vote and the right to equal higher education.

In the latter half of 1899 Ida began suffering serious seizures, followed by a prolonged period of depression. One can only speculate why depression set in. Perhaps it was the seizures themselves, or that she now had to use a wheelchair most of the time. But William had also decided to seek a second term, and that meant no retirement as she had planned and hoped.

She was, however, well enough a month after McKinley’s second inauguration to depart on a trans-continental trip by rail with him. On that trip she granted her only full-length newspaper interview as First Lady. She also accepted an invitation to an impromptu brunch to honor her across the bridge from El Paso, in Juarez, Mexico, at a private home, thus making her the first incumbent First Lady to visit a foreign country. President McKinley remained in El Paso. Later in the trip a cut on Ida’s finger became infected, progressing to blood poisoning, forcing the entourage to pause the itinerary and establish a base at a private home in San Francisco. McKinley conducted the nation’s business from there for nearly two weeks while Ida recovered. Since she was seriously ill, regular bulletins were issued to the nation updating her condition. Once she was improving, the party hastily traveled east to the White House, where Ida was able to recuperate for another month. Then the couple went to their home in Canton for the remainder of the summer.

Four months later, the President and First Lady traveled to Buffalo, NY for the Pan-American Exposition. Ida’s appearance in the grandstand was captured on a movie camera, making her the first First Lady to be filmed. But while there Ida avoided most of the Exposition’s venues because of the large crowds. She consequently was not present when at the Temple of Music, while in a receiving line for the public Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley.

During the next six days, it seemed for a time as if McKinley might recover. Ida was surprisingly strong, both physically and emotionally. When the physicians decided that he Presdient could not recover, they allowed Ida to see him once more, carefully choosing the time so Ida would not have to witness the moment of his death.

Of course, Ida was crushed by her husband’s death. The three-day itinerary of the funeral train from Buffalo to Washington for a service at the United States Capitol, and then to Canton must have been grueling. And from the fall of 1901 to the spring of 1904, Ida visited her husband’s coffin in the Werts Receiving Vault at West Lawn Cemetery until his memorial was built. Except for these visits, Ida did not leave her home, stating she expected William’s ghost to visit her there. She did, however, resume public activities after attending the laying ceremony of the cornerstone to McKinley’s monument on November 16, 1905. She continued her work on behalf of individuals seeking political appointments, and planned to visit the Philippines.

Ida was anxiously awaiting the completion of the McKinley Monument but she died on May 26, 1907 at the age of 59 years, four months before its dedication. So she survived the president by less than six years and was buried next to him in the monument on an altar in the center of the rotunda in a pair of marble sarcophagi. Their young daughters rest in the wall directly behind them.

Ida Saxton McKinley’s birthplace, childhood home and later married home is still standing in Canton, Ohio, and is now part of the National First Ladies Historic Site. It includes the Ida Saxton McKinley Historic Home and another building, just a block north, the Education & Research Center where the museum is housed.

Illustrations in order:

Ida Saxton as a young student - Courtesy National First Ladies' Library

Wm. McKinley at the time of his courtship of Ida Saxton - Courtesy McKinley Presidential Library

Official White House portrait of Ida Saxton McKinley

McKinley Monument, Canton OH

Katie McKinley - Courtesy National First Ladies' Library

Saxton McKinley House in Canton OH, Nat'l First Ladies Historic Site

Werts Receiving Vault where McKinley was interred for six years