NILES Library gets print of McKinley's assassin

President McKinley, killed in 1901, was born in the city in January 1843.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
NILES -- One of two known prints of the mug shot of the man who shot and killed the 25th U.S. president is part of the McKinley Memorial Library and Museum's collection.
The library received a photograph Friday of Leon F. Czolgosz, the man convicted of and executed for the Sept. 6, 1901, assassination of President McKinley.
The mug shot came from the Hannah Lindahl Children's Museum, Mishawaka, Ind.
"We'll probably have it framed and put it downstairs for now where you can see it," said Patrick Finan, library director.
McKinley was born Jan. 29, 1843, in Niles, in a house on Main Street, the seventh of William Sr. and Nancy Allison McKinley's nine children. His parents had moved from Lisbon between 1840 and 1842 to operate an iron forge.
Home: "I'm glad it's found its home," said Peggy Marker, director of the Indiana museum.
The museum transferred ownership of the photograph to the library and the library made a $2,500 donation to the museum's endowment in the name of Della Montgomery, the woman who donated the photo to the museum in 1966.
Montgomery's father, Howard B. Morrow, was the desk sergeant on duty at the police station when Czolgosz was arrested. The photo turned up about 18 months ago in a pile of memorabilia from the Mishawaka High School Class of 1894.
A note on the envelope in which the photograph was found states that the photograph was one of five prints made at police headquarters in Buffalo the day of the shooting. The negative was destroyed. Morrow is believed to have authored the note shortly after the assassin's arrest.
The Buffalo, N.Y., Historical Society has one of the other prints, which display front and profile views of the assassin, but the fate of the other three is unknown.
Marker had the photograph analyzed by photographic experts who determined that it is a platinum print, the type used in mug shots at the time.
Other organizations that study photography offered to take the photograph and use it for education and research. But Marker and her museum's board of trustees wanted it to go somewhere where it would be displayed.
A first: The McKinley Memorial Museum includes artifacts and memorabilia from the 25th president's personal and political life but until Friday, it didn't have a photo of his assassin.
Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley twice as he approached the president in a receiving line in Buffalo at the Pan-American Exposition. The president died eight days later.
Czolgosz was executed Oct. 29, 1901.
"I thought that this [McKinley Museum] sounded like the best home for it and the board agreed," Marker said.
dick@vindy.com