People of Note [excerpt]

The late EX-PRESIDENT AND MRS McKINLEY.—The recent death of the widow of the late ex-President McKinley [page break] closes a personal chapter of their joint career which is illustrative of one of the solid foundations on which the nation is built—that of marital felicity and faithfulness of the great middle class from which they both sprang. Of a truth it may be said that, although she survived her husband some six years, yet she buried her youth in his grave in the cemetery of Canton, in the state of which he was “the favorite son,” Ohio. The intervening period, betwixt his lamentable taking off and her death, was rather a vigil than a life. Indeed for both of them there had been years of the sacrifice that sanctifies—for Ida Saxton, the Canton banker’s daughter whom Major McKinley married in 1871, had the misfortune to lose their only two children by death, and although she dispensed his hospitality both whilst he was the Governor of the State of Ohio from 1892 to 1896, and subsequently at the White House as the wife of the President, there was scarcely a day during which she was a well woman, or during which his watchful eye was not apprehensive of her nervous collapse. Their mutual devotion was a trait in both their lives which will long remain a treasured memory.