Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [45]
At the service’s end, the casket was placed onto a funeral carriage to the strains of the president’s favorite hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” The procession made its way through Buffalo, its streets lined with mourners. The president lay in state at the Buffalo City Hall, where more than two hundred thousand citizens lined up to pay their respects.
The next morning, the funeral train departed for Washington, D.C. Following the customs established by earlier presidential funerals, McKinley’s body was returned to the White House before being taken down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. After lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda, the president’s coffin was carried back to the funeral train for its final journey to his hometown. Neighbors and friends of the slain president attended a public service in Canton, Ohio. McKinley’s remains were temporarily interred in the receiving vault at Westlawn Cemetery.
An outraged public called for Leon Czolgosz to be lynched. The self-described anarchist and admitted assassin was held in prison under tight security. Czolgosz was tried, convicted, and executed for McKinley’s murder in less than two months.
The William McKinley National Memorial was completed in 1907, and his coffin was moved to its final resting place and enclosed in a dark green granite sarcophagus. Ida McKinley, who had died earlier that year, was buried alongside him.
The granite tombs of William and Ida McKinley
Touring William McKinley’s Tomb at the McKinley National Memorial and Museum
The McKinley National Memorial and Museum is located in Canton, Ohio. It is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sundays. The site is closed on major holidays and may be closed intermittently from December 1 to April 1. Visitors are advised to call for further information on hours of operation.
There is no admission fee to visit the McKinley Monument. Admission to the museum is $7.00 for adults, $6.00 for senior citizens, and $5.00 for children ages three to eighteen. Children under age three are admitted free.
From the north: Take I-77 South to exit 106 and follow the signs to the McKinley National Memorial and Museum.
From the south: Take I-77 North to exit 105 and follow the signs to the McKinley National Memorial and Museum.
For additional information
McKinley National Memorial and Museum
800 McKinley Monument Drive, NW
Canton, Ohio 44708
Phone: (330) 455-7043
www.mckinleymuseum.org
“Elected on a staunchly protectionist platform, the last president of the nineteenth century came to anticipate many trends of the twentieth.”
—Richard Norton Smith
Americans like to think that the presidential office fosters growth in its occupants. (Woodrow Wilson more puckishly, and perhaps more accurately, observed that public men tend either to grow or swell.) William McKinley refutes the cynics. Elected on a staunchly protectionist platform, the last president of the nineteenth century came to anticipate many trends of the twentieth. A somewhat reluctant imperialist, McKinley saw the United States launched as a global power as a result of the Spanish-American War that brought the Philippines, Puerto Rico and (briefly) Cuba under American control.
Reelected in 1900, McKinley let it be known that he intended in his second term to break with tradition and visit his country’s newly added foreign outposts. In a still more radical departure from his own past, McKinley told a large crowd at Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition in September 1901 that “isolation is no longer possible or desirable…the period of exclusiveness is past.” In practical terms, this meant freer trade in place of the high tariff barriers of the past. McKinley the protectionist was transforming himself, almost overnight,