THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LEMOA AND TILDEN FOUNITIONE

When the President was in Chicago later on, Miss Craig took occasion to show him a photograph of the old homestead, across one corner of which he wrote his autograph.

By a remarkable coincidence, at the time of the assassination of the President, Miss Craig was in the Temple of Music at the Exposition, where she had gone with the desire to greet him personally. The reader can imagine how vividly the President's sudden death must have connected itself in her mind with that of his heroic ancestor in Ireland.

HISTORICAL FACTS.-William McKinley's ancestry has been traced back by some genealogists through Highland history into the dim era of Macbeth and Macduff. It is clearly demonstrated, at all events, that the McKinley family originated in the western part of Scotland, were identified with the Covenanter party in religious and civil affairs, and shared their indomitable resistance to the persecution and tyranny of the Stuart kings. In the times of Charles II. the family emigrated to the north of Ireland, joining their clansmen who in Cromwell's day had colonized the province of Ulster.

In the County of Antrim-Ireland's northernmost district-there stands a comfortable old farmhouse, which until recently attracted little notice, but which has now become a place of much more than local fame. Parish oracles point out the homestead of Dervock with unction, and errant Americans drift there from Larne, Belfast and even distant Dublin. For this squarely built farmhouse was the original home of the House of McKinley, and under this roof

was born James McKinley, pioneer of the family in America, an ancestor of the President of the United States.

Conagher, the hamlet in which this house is situated, is on the road between Ballymoney and Dervock, in the County Antrim, and the old farmhouse is interesting to visitors on account of its typical picturesqueness, as well as because it is the original home of the McKinley family, a fact which Antrim remembered with pride when William McKinley was elected President of the United States. No member of the family has occupied the house since 1838, when the then owner went to America to join the various members of his family who from the middle of the last century had come to America, worthy members of that army of Scotch-Irish colonists which contributed so largely to the settlement and civilization of this continent.

Two brothers McKinley, James and William, reached this country about twenty-five years before the battle of Bunker Hill. James settled in what is now the ancient town of York, in southern Pennsylvania, married, and sent his son David to fight under Washington's flag in the war of the revolution. When peace was restored and independence gained, David McKinley returned to the Pennsylvania homestead, and there lived until after the war of 1812. Then, joining the great tide that began to move westward, he removed to the country beyond the Ohio river, and settled in what is now Columbiana county, Ohio. There he founded the "Buckeye branch" of the McKinley clan.

While the McKinleys were thus making their way from Scotland to Ireland, and thence to Pennsylvania and Ohio, a family named Rose, also persecuted for

conscience's sake, was seeking liberty in another direction. Andrew Rose was a leader among the English Puritans, and was one of those who migrated to Holland for refuge from tyranny; thence, attracted by the enterprise of Penn, he came to America and settled at Doylestown, Pa. There he prospered, became a leader in politics and a member of the legislative council of the colony. His son, Andrew Rose, Jr., was a gallant soldier in the revolutionary army, and later an iron manufacturer, whose work supplied the patriots with many cannon and other implements of war. In time David McKinley and Mary, the daughter of Andrew Rose, Jr., became acquaintances and friends, then lovers, and finally husband and wife. Thus were allied two sturdy stocks of ScotchIrish and English Puritans, fully blending in the first offspring of this marriage—a boy, to whom was given the name of William.

THE PRESIDENT'S FATHER.-This William McKinley remained in eastern Ohio, and was one of the pioneers of the iron business in that region, with foundries at Fairfield, New Wilmington and elsewhere. His wife was Nancy Allison, a descendant, like himself, of Scotch Covenanter stock. To them were born eight children, one of whom, a boy born at Niles, in Trumbull county, Ohio-the second county north of Columbiana on January 29, 1843, inherited his father's name of WILLIAM. The house in which the future President was born stood until 1895, when it was torn down. It was a frame structure, two stories high, and what was once the parlor was latterly used as a grocery store. At the front there was a vine-covered porch, on which