Ida McKinley at William McKinley’s deathbed.
Four Presidents of the United States have been assassinated, each leaving a widowed First Lady.
The famous image of Vice President Johnson taking the oath of office with his wife and Mrs. Kennedy just after President Kennedy’s Dallas assassination.
The most recent of these dark moments in history took place fifty years ago this month, when President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed almost immediately upon being hit while riding in an open car through the streets of Dallas.
Jacqueline Kennedy at the President’s funeral.
His thirty-three year old wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy determined to focus on raising her two young children with a strong sense of their father.
She also carried out the work he would have done as a former President, of raising funds, planning and finally overseeing the dedication of his presidential library in 1979. She lived for thirty and a half years longer than him.
Like Jacqueline Kennedy, Lucretia Garfield preserved the memory and fostered the legacy of her late husband, President James A. Garfield, who was shot in a Washington train station in July of 1881, just four months after being inaugurated.
The widowed Lucretia Garfield
He was actually on his way to join her at the New Jersey shore. Instead, they were rejoined when she made her way down to him, back at the White House where a medical care unit was created in a vain attempt to save him.
Crete Garfield cooking for her husband in the White House kitchen.
During that period, Mrs. Garfield diligently remained near his bedside, doting on him, attempting to do what she could in strengthening his overall system with nutrition, even going down into the White House kitchen to prepare some of his broths and other light foods.
Garfield died two months later. Widowed at age forty-four, she lived until 1918, surviving him by a remarkable thirty-seven years. In later years, she spent winters and then increasingly longer periods in her Arts & Crafts style mansion in Pasadena, California.
Like Jackie Kennedy, Lucretia Garfield worked hard to overcome the often overwhelming grief of her loss but never permitted herself to indulge in it to the point of it dominating her life alone.
Mary Lincoln was depicted in black mourning veil at her husband’s bier in the White House East Room. In fact, she never appeared there.
Like Jackie Kennedy, Mary Lincoln was the other presidential widow who had been at her husband’s side when he was shot. The Lincolns were attending a comedy Our American Cousin at Washington’s Ford’s Theater in April of 1865 when John Wilkes Booth fired at the President. He died the next day.
Mary Lincoln photographed in the black mourning she wore for the rest of her life.
In contrast to Kennedy and Garfield, Mrs. Lincoln was overwhelmed with a grief from which she never entirely recovered.
She wrote bitterly of her personal loss to anyone who offered their sympathy and remained removed from either offering her advice or being asked her wishes in the creation of the many of Lincoln memorial endeavors.
Widowed at age forty-five, Mary Lincoln survived her husband by seventeen years, dying in great pain and sadness in 1882.
McKinley entering the Temple of Music, minutes before he was shot.
Like her fellow Ohioan Lucretia Garfield, Ida McKinley was not with her husband when he was shot on September 6, 1901 while they were in Buffalo to attend the Pan-American Exposition.
Like Garfield, President McKinley did not die immediately. The bullet did not hit any of his vital organs. Under the care of a team of doctors, it was believed that he would survive.
Over the next eight days, Ida McKinley stunned the nation which had perceived her as being entirely dependent on her husband and a permanent invalid.
Ida McKinley at her husband’s bedside.
News reports, coming from friends, family and officials who were in the house and stopped to speak with reporters roped off on the side of the Milburn House and headquartered there in a tent, told of her strength and even confidence of her husband’s full recovery.
Ida McKinley walking out of the Milburn House with her sister towards a carriage for a ride.
The most startling proof that it was now she who attempted to lift his spirits and comfort him through recovery was the day she appeared outside of the Milburn House where they were staying and walked out boldly, her head held high, with no assistance at all. She even stopped to talk to reporters briefly.
Her appearance was the single greatest sign to the press and the public that the President would recover from the shooting.
Another depiction of Ida McKinley at her husband’s deathbed. (Harper’s)
Six days after the shooting, however, the President’s condition took a turn for the worse. Anticipating that the First Lady would break down in hysterics at what seemed certain to end with her husband’s death, the doctors and even family members conspired to keep her away from her husband in his remaining hours and to then isolate her from the days of funeral proceedings.
When she did finally have a chance to speak with him the night before he died, she knew he would be gone soon but there was none of the emotional weakness everyone anticipated.
Nonetheless, as an precautionary measure, she was denied nearly every wish she expressed as the events unfolded following his death on the morning of September 14.
Not only was she prevented from appearing at the religious services held in the private Milburn House, kept upstairs with her nieces, but Ida McKinley was also not permitted to appear at the late president’s laying in state in Buffalo city hall.
McKinley at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition.
The Temple of Music where McKinley was shot.
Funeral procession to the Buffalo train station.
The only time the public had a chance to glimpse Ida McKinley during the next few days of public ceremonies was as she rode in the closed carriage to the Buffalo train station; however, it was noted that she was clearly visible through the large windows and that she sat straight and stoically as the carriage proceeded through the city’s streets.
During the train trip from Buffalo to Washington, she had to demand unrelentingly her right to look upon his face. The heavy grief all through the slow rail excursion was made all the mournful in the effort of citizens trying to best honor President McKinley.
At every stop, as soon as the train slowed down, choruses and choirs gathered alongside the tracks broke into endless, repeated renditions of his favorite hymn, “Nearer My God to Thee,” made especially famous as one sung eleven years later as the S.S. Titanic sank. Here is a rendition of it which is perhaps not unlike the way it was sung in September of 1901:
Brought to the White House, she was allowed to again look upon him in his coffin when he laid for a night in the East Room, but not permitted to attend his services in the U.S. Capitol.
The McKinley funeral train leaving Buffalo.
The McKinley funeral train, the last car where the coffin was placed on a bier.
The funeral car used by Ida McKinley from Buffalo to Washington to Canton.
The last car of the McKinley funeral train.
The McKinley funeral train passing through Pennsylvania.
The engine of the McKinley funeral train in bunting.
McKinley’s coffin being removed from the train in Washington.
President McKinley’s remains in the East Room.
McKinley’s funeral cortege from the White House to the U.S. Capitol.
The overnight trip to Canton, Ohio did end with her in a state of exhaustion and so it was thought she was being unreasonable when she asked that his coffin remain closed when it was placed in Canton’s court house and local citizens and friends were allowed to file by. She had been correct in her judgement for his remains had become darkened and disfigured by this time.
McKinley’s funeral train arrives in Canton.
McKinley’s cortege proceeds through Canton.
The McKinley cortege proceeds from the train station to Canton city hall.
The coffin is finally brought home to Ida McKinley for a final night.
The coffin is brought from the McKinley home to the Methodist Church.
McKinley’s funeral service in his home church. (Corbis)
McKinley’s coffin carried into the Methodist Church on Tuscarawas Street in Canton.
McKinley’s remains being taken from the Methodist Church in Canton to be brought to the cemetery.
McKinley’s remains being brought to Westlawn Cemetery.
Carriages transporting guests for President McKinley’s final service at the cemetery. The First Lady was not among them
Ida McKinley did not attend her husband’s funeral in his local Methodist Church or his burial at Westlawn Cemetery.
Ida McKinley beng driven on her daily ritual to the holding vault.
The very next day, however, she made the first of what became what seems to 21st century sensibilities to be a rather ghoulish rite of mourning by visiting his remains in what was called the holding vault, a stone church-like structure.
The holding vault visited daily vy the widowed Ida McKinley. (C.L. Walter photographer 1901)
There her flag-draped husband’s remains were kept on a stand until the anticipated memorial monument was completed for him.
Inside the McKinley holding vault where Ida McKinley went daily.
He, along with Ida, Katie and Little Ida would be permanently interned there in September of 1907.
Every day for several years, Mrs. McKinley fulfilled this one ritual, taking no particular interest in the national and state memorial projects and statues being erected to honor him.
All she spoke of was her late husband and desire to join him in death as soon as possible.
Curious citizens passing by the McKinley Campaign House where Ida remained essentially forbidden from leaving.
As curious crowds continued to pass by the McKinley “campaign house,” trying to get a glimpse of Ida McKinley, she would peek out the windows at them from time to time with great annoyance.
After several months, the crowds vanished and she was left alone in the house, refusing to leave it.
Not only was it a part of her sense of mourning ritual but there was a supernatural element to her self-imposed solitude.
A close-up of only one of two known snapshots taken of Ida McKinley as a widow.
She had every hope that the ghost of her beloved husband would return to her from the other side.
And then, suddenly, she stopped visiting the holding vault. Something entirely unexpected happened and her entire attitude changed.
In fact, everything about her life as a widow changed.
Ida McKinley, the new biography.
It is an aspect of her life, the very end of her life, entirely unknown until it emerged in the research for her new biography. And it is testament to the fact that, no matter how seemingly permanent an element of a person’s life may be, the capacity for change remains as long as they are alive
The full story on Ida McKinley’s reaction to her husband’s assassination, her untold story as a widow and how and why that existence suddenly changed is now revealed in Ida McKinley: The Turn-of-the-Century First Lady Through War, Assassination & Secret Disability.
It can be purchased here.
President McKinley’s death mask.
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- Ari & Jackie Onassis: X-Rated Movie, Nude Photos, the Kennedys & Paradise Lost (Part 5) (carlanthonyonline.com)
- The Never-Was McKinley Kittens (Part 4) (carlanthonyonline.com)
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Categories: First Ladies, The Garfields, The Kennedys, The Lincolns, The McKinleys
I really enjoyed your piece on Ida McKinley. You sure do have a great sense of salesmenship, Carl. I’m sure everybody reading this piece will want to know how Ida “rehabbed” herself. Seniors living w/pain of clinical depression are reluctant to consult with a psychiatrist, their primary care physician, or any type of therapist. They are worried even sicker, they will be dismissed as having Alzheimer’s or some other degenerative dementia. Who can blame them? We no longer seem to have a gentle form senility to label our Sr’s with. So I hope & pray that Ida’s story will encourage people to keep trying to improve their lives, regardless of age. Not every ailment known to man has to be “chronic”.
In Re to the supernatural element in Ida’s story, I am thinking of you being located in the LA area and what a ripe place it is to study “the occult”. I resided in a very “trippy” neighborhood there, it was the Los Feliz area near Griffith Park. I also lived in the Beachwood Canyon neighborhood near Hollywood and Vine. There was even an old Theosophical Society chapel nearby where I would sometimes go to hear their lectures. Unlike the New Age/New Thought movement associated with the Unity sect, not too many of their activities were open to public on a come-one/come-all spirit. It was hard to penetrate many of these groups back in 1970’s. I hope you take advantage of living in this land of fruits & nuts, and dabble in this esoteria. I assure you, these sects are far more interesting than the NewAge psychobabble being spoken on Ophra.
Thank you Suzanne – as always I greatly appreciate your perspective on everything. I think that the end of Ida McKinley’s life will truly shock people. It did me. As for her view on the supernatural, it was a unique cobbling together of what to many might seem like contrary tenets of faith but were for her blended together. It was a belief not only in an afterlife, but the idea of the dead being spirits among the living.