Audience we tell the story of americas 45 worst ladies. And now ida mckinley 45 first ladies, and now ida mckinley. This is about 45 minutes. Susan the story of isa mckinley , there 30 years together bring happiness early on, but Tragedy Strikes and changes the relationship into a life of illness and devotion which shapes the presidency at the turn of the new century. Joining us tonight to tell us this story are two guests retorting to the table president ial historian Richard Norton smith and the National FirstLadies Library historian Carl Sferrazza anthony, and this rare footage is of them arriving on stage in buffalo, new york, september 5, 1901, and that date is significant, because the next day, he would be felt by an assassins bullet. What was it about this that attract the president to want to go, especially . Mr. Smith it could not have been at a better time, because it was americas new place in the world and the mckinley presidency, very surprising in many ways. He had been identified with protectionism, and he would be the president to took the country on the world stage, and hawaii in 1988 1888, turning it into an inland empire, and at the end of his life, the last speech that he gave in effect, rekindled his earlier work, and talked in ways that i think 100 years later, we could all appreciate about opening america to the world. Susan as we are looking at our facebook and twitter postings, and everyone is asking about ida mckinley, and here she is traveling with the president. What did they know about her . Mr. Anthony this is the pattern of her life, that she has been grossly miscast by history as this victorian invalid on the fainting couch. That was not the truth, but there were times when she was that way, and she actually had three chronic disorders, one was a seizure disorder, known as epilepsy, and she had some kind of a neurological damage along her left leg which often lead to immobility or periods of it, in that she had a compromised immune system which made her susceptible. They took a tour across to california six months before he was shot, and when they got to california, she almost died in San Francisco and they used to travel and set up a western white house, and the issue the world was focused on, so this helped to gel the idea of her as an invalid and six months later, she was walking unassisted. Susan i think the very next day, september 6 1901, an assassin killed president mckinley. Who was he . Mr. Smith i have trouble pronouncing it. He was, i guess you would call it, a drifter. He was an anarchist in his politics. Susan what does that mean . Mr. Smith he believed, like many people at the turn of the century, that monarchs, for example, in europe existed to the detriment of the common man. Some anarchists were against all organized government, and they certainly were against a system that was taught by the powerful. Mckinley had power, and he had knowledge, and he had planned on killing the president early in the year. I think it was early in the year , and it was said that leon would stay up late at night reading about the death of the king, and he had plans to kill the president. Ironically, people around mckinley, there was no secret service protection. And he retired early that night. Susan and the last assassination, this is the first president to be assassinated. Mr. Smith and that is why we finally got serious about protecting president s. The president s secretary wanted very much to cancel the reception at the fair, and he worried about the threat, and ironically, he got in, and he managed to wrap the gun in a bandage around his hand, so it was unnoticed, and he shot the president twice. At first, it was thought that mckinley would recover, and that about a week later, he took a turn for the worse, and in and on way that is the last time people focused on mckinley rather than his successor, Theodore Roosevelt. Susan isa was not by his side idaq was not by his side when the assassination took place. Mr. Anthony we will get to the epilepsy disorder, but through the string of disorder she had there was one committed to helping her at least to control the seizures, and part of that required a very strict regimen of food, diet, also rest at regular points, so she had been there during the day, and then they went to Niagara Falls but then the doctor said, you know it is time for your rest, and both the president and mrs. Mckinley bought that, so she was taking her scheduled rest, and she suspected something happened when the hour started going by and he did not come back. She was very call, actually, when she was told she was there he calm, when she was told and almost in an extraordinary way, a period during his convalescence, when he is expected to improve, and she was talking to reporters which defies perception of her. Susan we have pictures of the funeral. What was it like at that time . Mr. Anthony you have got tr standing in the way. If you talked to the man on the street in september of 1901, they wouldve told you that mckinley was one of the greatest president s since lincoln. He was not simply admired. This was the man who brought us out of the greatest depression in American History and then projected American Power economic and military off on the world stage. He is a very large presence for someone to become almost forgotten, so when he died, there was an enormous grief in the country and there was a reason people love mckinley, even people who did not vote for him, which was because what they saw as his tenderness and devotion to this invalid wife. Susan now that we have told you the end of the story, we will go back and talk about ida, and we will go back to her early days in canton, ohio, to the house where she grew up, and then across the town of canton, the mckinleys em. This is the first video you will see tonight. [video clip] this is the house in which she was born. She grew up in this house, along with her sister and brother and her parents and her grandmother and this is the house that she lived in right up until the time that she met and married future president William Mckinley. This is the family parlor, where the family would have spent evenings reading and conversing with each other. This is not a place where they would entertain. We have on the walls here one of the earliest known photographs of item mckinley ida mckinlay along with her sister, known as little one, and her brother, george, and then on the wall, we have her father, and on this wall, we have a photograph of her beloved mother, kate saxton. And this was replicated from a photograph we received from a descendent, and it is one of the few interior photographs we have in the house. We are in the formal parlor of the house. In this, we have idas love for music, idas pno sitting over here, and she became the first first lady to provide entertainment after state dinners, showing a love of music. That was part of her very formal education. When she and her sister went on a grand tour of europe in 1869, one of the items she brought home with this great music box which was donated by a descendent of William Mckinley, and she bought this box in geneva, switzerland, and there are letters that she wrote during the trip and she sees music boxes in different places but she does not care what the quality, and she says, i think im going to wait until i go to geneva, switzerland, and im going to i a music box there and this is a music box she bought for her mother. We are going into storage to see some of the letters. And letters to her parents from her and her sister mary, and they went to europe to see all of the countries that they could, and the letters that we have detail a lot of the things that they saw, the countries that they went to. This one is from edinburgh, from scotland. She says people ought to travel to see how much there is to learn and read. How much i will enjoy everything burns has written since i have traveled. She really made the most of her trip and she was intensely studying most of the countries and seeing the things she could see on this grand tour, which took six months. We have a few other things that represent her life as a young girl. This is the hymnal that she would have carried in her hands to go to and from church. It is monogrammed ida saxton, so this was before she met mckinley and what she used as a sunday school teacher. Another item representing her early life is one of my favorites. This is the actual wedding license that William Mckinley junior signed. He dropped the junior after his father died, so this would have been what they filed before they got married in january 1871, and at the time, it was not necessary for the woman to sign it so William Mckinley signed it, ida did not. [end video clip] susan she was born to well off parents. What is important to know . Mr. Anthony they were progressive, particularly with some issues. They were against slavery, and unequal education for women and her mother was extremely well educated. Ida mckinley was the most formally educated woman of the first ladies up to that time. A fellow abolitionist, and a grandfather was friends with horace greeley, and really involved. Ohio was very much the california of its day. In the earlier part of the 19th century, representing the west, and that is where you really find this movement of equal education for women and so idas father helps to bring this same to abolitionist, whose name i cannot remember right now, but ida then follows her when the teacher goes to teach at delphi academy. This is during the civil war and then she goes on to study in cleveland, and then she goes to study at brook call seminary in pennsylvania, and what you see here is an educated young woman with an education interest in finance and give ability for mathematics and also activity. She is an unusually physically fit young woman, and she hikes upwards of 10 miles per day on that trip to europe. Two significant factors on that trip to europe. One, she sees for the first time poor and workingclass women working in belgium on lace and finds out how very little they make and have to live on, and she is sort of devastated by this, and she reflects on this, so she starts buying a lot of lace as a way to do her part to help them, and secondly, she sees an artist who is printing, copying a painting at one of the galleries, and it first, she is off by this, that she reflects a real sense of empathy for People Living with disabilities. Susan and she was so good with numbers that her father who worked at a bank again for a job as a teller, and she became a manager, and was it normal for a woman at that time to work, or was it ok because of her father . Mr. Smith in a capacity like this, and it does take a lot say a lot about the relationship with her father. Susan we want to invite you to join in, and on twitter, you can use the hash tagged first ladies, and you can go to the facebook page, and there is also a conversation about ida mckinley. You can join it, and we also take your phone calls, and you can use the phone numbers on your screen, and the numbers are divided into regions of the country, east of the mississippi and west of the mississippi so she met at the bank major William Mckinley. Mr. Smith mckinley is very up. This is a woman who is pretty cosmopolitan, pretty sophisticated, and from ohio in a man in a family that had been in the iron making business. Protectionism, went to a place called Allegheny College for year and came back, and then, of course, the real classroom, as for some buddy in his generation, was the war. 1861. He went in as a private and came out as a major. And he was following the path of a fellow ohio man hayes, and he became a protege of sorts, and in fact, years later ida would spend a lot of time in the hayes white house, and she knew their children, and that relationship became a very significant one. Susan so married when she was 23, and he was 27. What were their early years like . Mr. Anthony she liked politics, and there was no question when i went through writing this new biography that you see legal cases involving the saxton family. That family really helped build the city of canton and that city went on to become a major important Industrial Center at that time, and certainly her father and grandfather helped build it, and mckinley helped sustain it and make it famous, but he was in prominence largely because of her. Susan and in 1873, and onset of problems for her. Mr. Anthony yes. They were living in a house that was mistakenly described. It was a house that her father bought and leased to them. She gave birth on Christmas Day 1873, 2 there first daughter, katie, very healthy, who became the central focus of their lives, and idas mother became very ill, it turns out, with cancer. And it was owned, the house, by her maternal grandmother. It had passed from four generations all through women and she was very close to her mother and grandmother, and she was prepped pregnant a second time at the time she had cancer, and two weeks before her mother died of cancer, she gave birth and then there was her mothers Burial Service and ida, from what we can tell with firsthand accounts at the time, she struck her head. She may have had a very bad injury to her spine but she gives birth two weeks later to a child who only lives of four months, and at this relatively young age starts developing seizure disorder. Susan on facebook, it is said, i heard she suffered from depression after her first second daughter passed away, and it got worse. Mr. Anthony one of the great discoveries that i think the new biography will point out is almost the entire first half of the mckinley years in the white house, ida was fine. Ida mckinley was traveling on her own, philadelphia baltimore, and she had a mobility problem come but she adapted, and she did not hide the fact that she had this occasional walking problem. The depression, you know, ida mckinleys physical problems and the resulting frustrations and emotional problems, sometimes frustrations with her husband because even though it was an extremely loving and devoted relationship, there were like any marriage, times of strain you know. It is all well and good of being optimistic and not giving into depression when you are the one who can walk away, but there were times when this young woman suddenly found her life in decline. Mr. Smith i have a quick question, and you know more about it, but in the first term, there was this amazing scandal about the murder of the first ladys brother, presumably by a mistress and then a trial, which must have been pretty sensational, in which the mistress was acquitted. Following that, she went into a severe depression. Mr. Smith that was a story that was put out by a group, and she is treated more like a caricature. That happened in october 1898 and it is not until june of 1899 , a good amount of time after the trial was over, that other factors, his reelection, his campaign, and his not telling her that he is going to run for reelection begins this discussion that the viewer asked about. Susan were going to take a few callers. Len, from new jersey. My question relates specifically to the hobarts and the mckinleys, and more specifically, the role that jenny hobart played with sort of an acting first lady and can you speak to that . Mr. Smith mr. Anthony those are false. She was never absent from any of the official duties of first lady and had someone substituting for her. She had her young nieces, mary, with him she was very close to and sometimes they were a little frustrated, because sometimes they do not want to come and undertake this, and mrs. Hobart was very close to her and said you are president or you can do what you want. If you want to change the seating arrangements, and ida considered her a very good friend, but she never substituted for mrs. Mckinley. Susan another caller. How did ida deal with the death of her children, in comparison to other first ladies, such as Mary Todd Lincoln . Mr. Smith she certainly was not up in the ad at writing letters to them, but it was clearly traumatizing, the experience. It is the worst thing that any parent can go through, and that is universal. Mr. Anthony the second child picking up the thread, moving out of the house, that house was on postcard and became famous as the mckinley home, and the honeymoon, euphemisms that were used. And he worked longer in this house than any other. Dealing with this very new factor in her life, a seizure disorder and she began to several years later take comfort in certain tenets of buddhism, and one, in particular, was reincarnation, and you begin to see ida mckinley, writing letters, and she would always have her picture on the wall, and she kept the clothing and chair. She spoke as if the child was sometimes still alive and there is obviously a lot of firsthand accounts of her looking at Young Children because she believed that perhaps katie had been reincarnated. Susan we are going to return to the saxon mckinley house to learn more about the Political Partnership of the mckinleys. [video clip] they had living quarters up on the third floor of the house, which was originally a wall room that was turned into living quarters with a sitting room and an entertaining area, and also off of that room, an office that william used to conduct business. We are in William Mckinleys office, and then this later became the living quarters of ida and William Mckinley. This is the kind of setup that they had during his political years. He conducted business, and his doors stayed open to the living quarters, and she stayed in the living quarters, but she could hear what was going on. She was a silent political helpmate to William Mckinley. They would discuss things, but she would never take part and would never come and join in, but this was the type of setup that they had in columbus, and there was no governors mansion, and in washington, and here at the saxon house. [end video clip] susan what was his politics . What was it like . Mr. Smith about the terrorists and industry tarrifs and the industry, and it would flipflop today. The industrial northeast. Sweeping the south and the west. And it is the reverse of what we take for granted today. Mckinley had, he identified with this issue. His name was on the terrace tarrif. The