Name/Title
Copy, ReprographicEntry/Object ID
2016.2.53Scope and Content
Ohio Boyhood by Edwin P. Hoyt
...County, Ohio, so the children could better their education. The family moved, but William McKinley, Sr., could not. He must stay near the sources of iron ore to run his furnace, and he did this, going to live with his family only on weekends.
Poland was a prosperous village. It had five stores, a Prebyterian church, a Methodist church, a grist mill, a saw mill, a cotton mill, its own foundry, and about a hundred houses. It also boasted an academy, where William and his brothers went to school. This Poland Seminary had been opened in 1830 to teach the classics and English literature, or at least the tradition of higher education in Poland extended back that far. The academy had actually come into being under B. F. Lee in 1849. When William attended the school, the faculty consisted of four teachers, and even lessons in instrumental music were offered. the three-story building was so impressive that, in the fashion of the growing West, it was called "the college." Here William McKinley went to school.
After seven years at the academy, he entered Allegheny College at Meadville, Pennsylvania. He had scarcely begun his studies at Allegheny, however, when he became ill and had to withdraw for the year and return to Poland. He firmly intended, he said, to go back to Allegheny the next year and start again, hard times had come to the Wesetern Reserve area of Ohio and it was necessary for him to help support the large family. (Nine children were born in all.)
William did what so many boys had done before when they had the rudiments of education: he found a job teaching in a district school soem two miles from Poland. He was paid $25 a month, and he could have boarded with various...Collection
BlaneyAcquisition
Accession
2016.2.0Source or Donor
Eileen B. BlaneyAcquisition Method
Gift