First Ladies National Historic Site
museum and library in Canton, Ohio
First Ladies National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Site located in Canton, Ohio. During her residency in Washington, D.C. Mary Regula, wife of Ohio representative Ralph Regula, spoke regularly about the nation's first ladies. Recognizing the paucity of research materials available she created a board to raise funds and for a historian to assemble a comprehensive bibliography on American first ladies. From these inspirations came a National First Ladies’ Library, established in 1996, and the First Ladies National Historic Site.
Operations
Established in 2000 to commemorate all the United States First Ladies, the First Ladies National Historic Site comprises two buildings: the Education & Research Center and the Ida Saxton McKinley historic home, which preserves the home of Ida McKinley, the wife of U.S. president William McKinley. The brick Victorian house, built in 1841 and modified in 1865, was Ida's birthplace and childhood home, and William McKinley later live with Ida in this house for over twenty years while he worked as a Canton attorney and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Three floors of the home can be viewed by ticketed guided tour.
The Education & Research Center, housed in the former City National Bank Building (1895), offers three floors to the public at no charge. The first floor features a large exhibit hall of rotating exhibits as well as a small replica of the first White House Library created by First Lady Abigail Fillmore. This building also contains a small gift shop and the National Park Service Welcome Center which provides information and ticketed tours of the Saxton House.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “First Ladies National Historic Site” is museum and library in Canton, Ohio. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through First, Ladies and National, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “museum and library in Canton, Ohio” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5453137. VIAF identifies the subject as 315530760. The Library of Congress control number is sh2005002665. Authority coordinates are 40.797, -81.375. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 2000, 1841 and 1865.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “First Ladies National Historic Site”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow First Ladies National Historic Site primary sources, First Ladies National Historic Site archive and First research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “First Ladies National Historic Site”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “First Ladies National Historic Site” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.