His grandson, William McKinley, the father of the President, was the second child in a family of thirteen, and was born at New Lisbon, Ohio. He was engaged in the iron and foundry business, and resided successively at New Lisbon, Niles, Poland and finally Canton. It was while engaged in the iron industry, then in a primitive stage of development, at Niles, Ohio, that William McKinley, the elder, met and married Miss Nancy Campbell Allison, daughter of a well-to-do business man in the growing Ohio town. And there was born, on January 29, 1843, William McKinley, subject of this biography, and a third martyr President of the United States. The father was at that time manager and part owner of an iron furnace. But seeing greater possibilities in the newer region about Poland, he disposed of his interests at Niles, and removed thither, where he again established a forge.
Surrounding the rising town of Poland lies a fine agricultural country, and in the healthful environment of rural scenes and labor’s activities the earliest years of the life of William McKinley, Jr., were spent. Through his mother’s family he traced his lineage back to the substantial middle classes of England. And this excellent woman must have possessed in mind and soul and bodily frame the better qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race. Her influence upon this son was pronounced from the beginning; and it seems that an almost prophetic power was given her, for if the whole of the future had been revealed to her she could have guided him no more wisely, could have laid with no more sagacious skill the foundations which his career as statesman and as man required.
And no mother was ever more devotedly loved by son than was this American matron by William McKinley. Throughout her life he made her comfort his own care, and maintained with an increasing tenderness the gentle bearing which, as a child, had been part of his life. In her age, when she had lived to see her son elevated to the chiefest office in the Nation, the beauty of that filial attachment appealed to the people, and untold thousands proved their appreciation when they lovingly bestowed upon her the title, “Mother McKinley.”
One of the reasons for the elder McKinley’s removal to Poland was that his children might have the advantages of the better schools which—oddly enough—flourished in the younger city. An academy had been established there; and when young William passed through the preparatory years, he was admitted to that institution. As he passed from childhood to youth’s estate, he filled the months of vacation in productive labor. At times he worked upon the farms which surrounded the growing, thriving town. At other times he engaged as a clerk in one or other of the stores. But he was never apt at a trade, and really had not the faculty to “buy, and sell, and get gain,” as had his younger brother Abner. And as a consequence he maintained that attitude of balance which left him free in his development, and permitted that ripening and broadening of his mind in all directions which the early adoption of a mercantile life would almost certainly have prevented. And it was proof of still another virtue on the lad’s part that he preferred, of all the industries that came to his hand, the heavy labor of the forge and foundry. Those years of healthful life, when native powers were developed by bodily industry, when regular hours, plain but abundant food, and long hours of restful sleep were adding to brain and brawn, when the wise mother was guiding him so gently in morals and manners—in those years the character of the future President, the statesman, the soldier and the American patriot, was formed.
As he acquired more of the learning which the academy placed within his reach, young William employed portions of his vacations in teaching school. Not only did this occupation furnish him admirable discipline and training in the process of his development, but it provided him with rather more money for the further prosecution of his studies.
For it was one of the characteristics of the “McKinley boys” that they PAID THEIR WAY. Although the father might have provided them with all needful books and clothing, paid all their school expenses and provided them with spending money, thus encouraging them in idleness, the wise plan of the iron founder, and of that “Mother McKinley,” whom a nation has delighted to honor, did not contemplate such a system. They did plan to encourage independence and self-reliance in their children; and they succeeded in achieving that end.
The first term of school taught by William McKinley, Jr., was in the Kerr District, about four miles from Poland, where he presided over the studies of nearly half a hundred pupils through the winter months of 1859–60. With the money secured he not only assisted in defraying the expenses of his sisters and brother at the academy, for which they were by this time prepared, but he was enabled to enter Alexander College, in the autumn of 1860. Two years before that date he had united with the Methodist Church, and had been received into full communion with the society of that denomination in Poland. And through all the years of his life, to the very end, he maintained that relation. In his later years he had been a regular attendant at the forms of worship, a frequent guest at the conferences of his church; and his counsels have been continually at the service of those high in the management of the affairs of Methodism.
It is told of him with a good deal of interest that in the years following the revival at which his conversion was confessed, he was at once a consistent Christian and a happy young man. He delighted in healthful sports, in games which tested muscle, skill and endurance, and took the heartiest possible interest in life. Those were the years under the calm guidance of the wise mother, when stores of power were laying up against the day of need that should come as manhood brought its duties. He was passing through his formative period under the most normal and healthy conditions possible. And that was the best preparation for the broad requirements, the heavy burdens which the future was to lay upon him.
His brother Abner has said that William was a general favorite; that he had no enemies. And one can well believe it, for throughout his adult life he has gone with friends. No one ever hated him. No one ever received an affront at his hands. There is a foolish adage that a man is weak and inconsequential who makes no enemies; that such a character can not be positive, yet that would be a perverse or an ill-informed man who would say William McKinley was either weak or of the negative type of life. And as he has been in manhood, so he was in the early days about the town of Poland. He knew all the workmen in the iron mills, and all the farmers for miles around. He understood them perfectly, and the bond of sympathy for them which was planted in his breast while yet a lad was one of the guides by which he shaped legislation when he came to be a man. His boyish frankness and simplicity and generosity remained permanent traits in his character to the end.
William McKinley, Sr., was a whig, and one of the thousands who marched from that old party into the ranks of the Republicans. Young William had read a great deal. His youthful fancy had been stirred with the stories of California gold, and the Overland Trail. His home was fairly supplied with such reading as is good for a boy, and a part of it dealt with the adventures and the activities of Colonel John C. Fremont. That “Pathfinder,” as his friends called him, was a hero to young William. More impressive far than the stories of wealth in the mines were the reports of Fremont’s expeditions. More attractive than the magnet which drew adventurers to the new Eldorado was the unspoken yearning to become a member of one of Colonel Fremont’s bands of explorers.