Ida McKinley

Ida Saxton worked as a teller and manager in her father’s bank before her marriage to William McKinley in 1871. Following the deaths of their two young daughters, Katie and Ida, in the mid-1870s, Ida McKinley grappled with depression and seizures.

This portrait miniature, painted in the White House, highlights the first lady’s cropped hair. Doctors had recommended that she keep her hair short to lessen the weight on her cranial nerves, in the hopes that it would reduce her seizures and chronic headaches.