The First Ladies' National Library and historic Saxton-McKinley home in Canton, Ohio, started when one woman wondered why some of the nation's most well-known First Ladies were still largely unknown and unsung.
Mary Regula, as the spouse of long-time Congressman Ralph Regula, knew a bit about the lives of political wives and witnessed several First Ladies fulfilling the demanding role of presidential spouses.
When her husband asked Mary to speak at a local civic club, she prepared a presentation on the wife of President Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and found there was a real dearth of information about our nation's First Ladies.
I remember my own annoyance about the lack of information about women's history in my local library and classes when I was young, so I can empathize with Regula's frustration and admire her effort to bring more of those stories to light.
We first stopped by the Saxton-McKinley home where the museum's Mary Rhodes took us on a quick tour and told about First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley's life.
Ida Saxton grew up in Canton, Ohio, as the daughter of a prominent banker who stressed the importance of education and independence to his two daughters. He sent them, with a chaperone, on a six-month Grand Tour of Europe, and Ida began working at her father's Stark County Bank when she returned home. She worked as a clerk, cashier, and occasionally as the bank's manager when her father traveled.
Ida married William McKinley in 1871. The couple celebrated their wedding reception in the ballroom at Ida's family home, a two-story, gable-roof house built in 1841 with a mid-1860s addition. The young McKinleys moved into the home's large ballroom area and an adjoining study after their marriage.
The McKinleys lived in the home off and on until President McKinley's 1901 assassination. Ida lived in Canton after his death, visiting her husband's grave nearly every day until her 1907 death.
The Saxton-McKinley home later became a tavern and a boarding house, and photos I saw of the building taken in the 1980s showed it as a sadly deteriorated building.
Marsh Belden, Sr., the grandson of Ida's sister, stepped in to save the house from demolition. He restored the exterior and got the home placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
By 1995, the First Ladies Library was established. The next five years saw restoration of the Saxton-McKinley home's interior, Marsh Belden's donation of the nearby seven-story 1895 City National Bank Building to the Library, and Congressional authorization of the First Ladies' National Historic Site and public opening as part of the National Park Service in 2000.
Sheila A. Fisher, Ph.D., a retired clinical psychologist and one of the Library's original volunteers, oversaw restoration, renovations and acquisitions for the organization at the request of board members who knew of her love of architecture and interior design.
Fisher's attention to detail was apparent as we toured the Saxton-McKinley home with Rhodes and she pointed out period-style wallpapers and furnishings, many of them meticulously recreated using historic photographs and details remembered by those who visited the home as young children.
Rooms open to visitors include a parlor, sitting room, bedroom and the ballroom, which serves as a gallery for photos and short tributes to each of the First Ladies.
Costumed docents usually give hour-long tours of the home, although Rhodes was nice enough to take us on a short private tour of the house and allow me to take a few photos to share here.
The tour also includes a trip to the Education and Research Center housed in the old bank building one block north of the Saxton-McKinley home.
We visited the reception center and exhibit hall on the building's first floor to see the restored marble banking room. The building underwent $7.5 million dollars in renovations, equipment purchases and electronics upgrades, while restoring many of the bank's 1890s architectural details.
Exhibits on the ground floor change every few months, and there is a 91-seat Victorian-style theater that shows videos about the First Ladies and other historically important women.
Abigail Powers Fillmore was the first First Lady to earn her own living, working as a teacher before her 1825 marriage to President Millard Fillmore. She organized the first White House Library, and the First Ladies' Library replicates her 6,400-piece library on the first floor.
The research library and archives take up much of the rest of the 20,000-square-foot building and are available to students and researchers by appointment.
About 500 dresses and accessories worn or used by First Ladies throughout history, as well as books, videos, photos, speeches, manuscripts, scholarly research papers and other artifacts make up this national archive.
Allow a couple of hours to tour the library and home. This attraction is appropriate for older children and adults with an interest in history and historical restoration.
Researchers will find an annotated bibliography with more than 50,000 entries, articles, First Lady biographies, study guides and other items at the Library's Web site.
Rhodes gave me a copy of This Elevated Position: A Catalogue and Guide to the National First Ladies' Library and the Importance of First Lady History, which I found helpful when researching this article. The catalog is also good for visitors who want to remember their tour with photographs of the home and museum artifacts as the site normally doesn't allow visitors to take photos or video (and the reason I have no photos of the interior of the Library building).
This story is part of a series of posts about Canton museums. Check out Discover something for everyone at the William McKinley Museum in Canton, Ohio, and check back later this week for a story about the Canton Classic Car Museum.
Want to learn about Michigan's own First Lady? I wrote Berry Ford, the Nation's "First Mama" after touring a special exhibit of her clothing and accessories in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Thanks to the Canton-Stark County Convention & Visitors Bureau for their assistance with planning our recent visit to Canton and arranging for comped media passes to the museum.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved
Awesome article. I hope you don't mind, I re-posted your article following your link on Twitter and sourced back to you. This is fantastic information on U.S. Presidents First Ladies. I am originally from Northeastern Ohio and didn't know about this museum until I read your post.
Posted by: TheUSPresidents | April 04, 2015 at 08:58 AM