Ohio History Journal

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232 Ohio Arch

232      Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

 

 

PRESIDENT WILLIAM McKINLEY.

 

MAIN EVENTS IN HIS LIFE.

William McKinley was born at Niles, Trumbull County,

Ohio, and was descended from Scotch and Irish ancestry. James

and William McKinley, the heads of the two branches of the

McKinley family in this country, one in the Southern, the other

in the Northern States, came from the north of Ireland. James

was the father of David McKinley, the great-grandfather of

the late President.

James McKinley settled in York County, Pennsylvania. His

son, David McKinley, served with honor in the Colonial army in

the Revolutionary War. David's second son, James, married

Mary Rose. The Roses were of English extraction. To James

and Mary Rose McKinley were born twelve children, of whom

William McKinley, the father of the President, was the second

child. He was born November 15, 1807, in Mercer County,

Pennsylvania. He moved to Canton, Ohio, and when he was

twenty-two years of age he was married to Nancy Allison, by

whom he had nine children, the late President being the seventh

child.

At the time of President McKinley's birth, his father was

managing an iron furnace at Niles, Ohio. Later the family re-

moved to Poland, Ohio, where William McKinley, Jr., attended

the public school and the academy, an institution of advanced

grade for that period. He applied himself to his studies with

such diligence and success that at the age of seventeen he taught

a term of school in what was then known as the Kerr District. The

funds he acquired by teaching he expended for further tuition

for himself and other members of the family in the Poland

Academy. He was hardly sixteen years of age when he united

with the Methodist Episcopal Church. He at once took up the

duties of a Christian life and faithfully filled them to the end. At

the age of seventeen he entered the Allegheny College, but his

health becoming impaired, he shortly returned to Poland.