"This leads us down to David McKinley, grandson of the immigrant and great-grandfather of the President. He was born on the old homestead in Chanceford township, May 16, 1755. In 1776 he enlisted in Captain Reed's Company of Ferrymen in the war of the Revolution. This was the the Seventh Company of the Eighth Battalion of York county militia. The militiamen, it should be remembered, were called out in emergencies and were drafted in sections for active service making what were then called tours of service. In this way nearly all the militia of Pennsylvania saw many tours of service, much hard fighting and the most perilous kind of military life.

"The local historians of York County had been in correspondence with the President respecting his York County antecedents. He had expressed himself as much gratified by their researches and interest in his ancestry, and faithfully promised, at an opportune time, to visit the scenes of his ancestral abode. Several dates for the proposed visit were partly agreed upon, and great preparations for the visit were in prospect when the critical events preceding the outbreak of the Spanish War compelled successive postponements of the visit.

“As a matter of interest we may add that a muster roll of the company of which his great-grandfather was a member, and ever since the Revolution in the possession of the descendants of Colonel John Hay, was some years ago presented to the President and received by him with many expressions of delight and satisfaction."

CHAPTER ПІ.

Career of President McKinley-Raised to Rank of Captain and Brevet-Major in the Army-Romance of Early Life -Conspicuous Acts of Legislation During His Administration as President.

ASSOCIATED with the glorious names and memories of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln and Grant as a man twice chosen in succession by the people to be the Chief Magistrate of the nation, at one of the great epochs in its history, the American who died at Buffalo September 14, had not yet completed the even threescore years of life, though in the fiftyeight years alloted to him in private life and in public place, he had run the whole gamut of human experience, nobly acquitting himself in each stage in a way that gave visible embodiment to American ideals and splendid traditions of things accomplished in all that he set his hands to do.

As a studious boy and gallant soldier; then in private life an able lawyer skilled in his profession; a public man whose re-election seven times in succession to Congress represented the confidence and unerring belief of his own neighbors; as Governor and then as President, the broad patriotic statesman whose policies commanded regard at home and respect abroad, the boy born at Niles, O., on January 29, 1843, represented in his struggles and successes the typical American in a Republic which is opportunity for the humblest.

No President came of better stock, and it was to the sturdiness of frame and mind, and not to the mere accidents of birth or position, that made William McKinley a marked figure, whether as a boy of eighteen, serving the Union on the field of battle or as a President at fifty-three, planning policies that made it a nation high in the world's councils. The ancestors of the latest President of the United States were Covenanters in Scotland Jacobites in Ireland, Revolutionary heroes in America-men who

fought and prayed and loved freedom; men on whose grave, steadfast natures the world's opposition wrought about the same impression as does the wave on the rock. On his mother's side, Mr. McKinley was descended from a race which has contributed moral and mental fiber to the American race equally with the Scotch-Irish-the Teutonic.

The first McKinley in the new world settled near York, Pa., and David McKinley, the President's great-grandfather, was one of those who sprang to arms at the summons of '76. He was among the first "expansionists" of this country-moving his family, like so many other Revolutionary veterans after peace with England had been declared, to the then "continuous wilds" of Ohio, and there helping to found a State.

STRUGGLE TO GAIN AN EDUCATION.

The patriot's grandson, William McKinley, Sr., was one of the pioneers in the iron industry at Niles, O., which he established at Fairfield, O., in 1827, when he was twenty years old, and the husband of Nancy Campbell Allison, then a young woman of eighteen. When the elder McKinleys moved to Niles it cannot be said that the ironmaster's home represented anything more than the frugal, thrifty households of the neighboring farmers. The iron industry in the' 30's in rural Ohio had none of the return for labor or capital that are common to-day.

So the early years of the twenty-fifth President of the United States, if not spent in poverty, at least represented that struggle to gain an education and position and home comforts that made the American character and the American spirit one of ceaseless endeavor and unresting ambitions. The seventh son in a family of nine as a small child had, therefore, none of the surroundings that are supposed to weaken one for the conflicts of life. On the contrary, from the very first there was everything to inure one to hardship and to suggest with peculiar force the American idea that every one had his future in his own hands, in his own efforts.

As was natural in the Western Reserve, the elder McKinleys had the pioneers' passion for education, and by the time William

had gone for a few years to the public school at Niles his parents decided to remove to Poland, in Mahoning County, where the educational opportunities were better. In leaving Niles the McKinleys departed a locality famous as the birthplace of celebrities. Less than one hundred miles away, at Lancaster, the two Shermans, soldier and Senator, were born and raised; thirty miles away, at Cuyahoga, President Garfield, the second martyr, first saw the light; in Delaware, not far distant, was born another President, Rutherford B. Hayes.

Poland was a New England town in every sense but a geographical one. The New England spirit of discussion, of ambition, of religious fervor and intense political feeling, actuated the democratic little colony, whose richest man could not draw his check for $10,000. No doubt, this plunge into an atmosphere of pugnacious denominationalism, bitter pro- and anti-slavery debate, temperance agitation and discussion of the new startling doctrine of woman's rights-inculcated by Lucretia Mott through the strong Quaker element in the town-was a strong factor in young McKinley's development. He joined in everything but play, for which he evinced indifference when a book was to be had. He joined, at the age of sixteen, the Methodist Church, of which he always remained a staunch member.

OWED MUCH TO HIS MOTHER.

Though he did not follow her specific leanings in the matter of sect, it was from his mother that he absorbed his religious inspirations, and he was nearer to her in traits and character than to his father. He resembled her strongly in face, in manner and in many mental peculiarities. She was an Allison, of Scotch Covenanter stock. There were Allisons among the victims of Claverhouse's dragoons, and there were other Allisons who, after long imprisonment for conscience sake, left their homes in the Lowlands and sought religious freedom in the American colonies.

Nancy Allison had the characteristics of her race, and her life in Ohio developed her natural gifts of management, thrift and earnestness. She was profoundly religious, and at the same

time intensely practical. She imparted the stamp of her vigorous character to all her offspring. There was no black sheep in her flock. The children grew up to be serious, competent, independent men and women, and the President was but typical of the stock.

EARNEST AND SUCCESSFUL STUDENT.

His early education was received at the Poland Academy, where the children of the well-to-do, although this meant very little in those days, were sent. It was meagre enough, and to keep him there was not accomplished without sacrifice on his part as well as the family's. However, by studying and teaching others as well as himself, and having the bar in view, he was able, in 1860, to enter the junior class at Allegheny College, at Meadville, Pa., at seventeen, having earned his matriculation fees by teaching in neighboring village schools. Here he plunged into study with such stern earnestness that his health broke down before he had completed his first year's course. Returning, he found the family in financial straits, owing to his father's failure in business. So far from finishing his education, it became his duty to help provide for the family, and he manfully undertook it, accepting a position as teacher at $25 a month, and later became a clerk in the Poland post office, his first slight touch with the Federal Government to whose defense he was to fly next year and in whose broader service he was to lead a nation of 76,000,000 a generation later.

In his study years McKinley was very fond of mathematics, but for Latin he cared little, although he always passed his examinations creditably. In the colleges and academies at that time mathematics, grammar and the dead languages constituted pretty much the whole stock of instruction. He showed no fondness for the debates of the literary societies or the orations of the regular Saturday school exercises, but he was known as a good essay writer and was a forceful reasoner rather than a mere rhetorician. But he was not destined to remain the village schoolmaster long, for the "irrepressible conflict" soon became a fact and on June 11, 1861, William McKinley became a private in