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The McKinley House (In storage)
For two weeks prior to our 20th Anniversary celebrations, a curatorial team, comprising James Moore, Clarence Fenton and Michael Nugent, numbered and dismantled a building near Ballymoney in North Antrim. The last remaining numbered stones from the building arrived in the Ulster American Folk Park on the morning of Saturday 6 July 1996. The significance of the date was not lost on those involved in the project, because twenty years after opening its doors to the public, the museum rescued from demolition a prized future exhibit in the form of the ancestral home of one of America's Presidents - William McKinley.
The dwelling had been used for a store for many years after its furniture and contents had been removed in the early 1990s to form part of an exhibit 'village', Ballymaclinton, reconstructed in London as part of the great Anglo-French Exhibition of 1908.
With dimensions of 52ft by 20ft, the single-storey cottage was substantial for its time with five rooms downstairs and at least two upstairs in a full loft reached by a small permanent staircase in the kitchen. When rebuilt, it will be a valuable asset on the Old World site and a particular focal point for visitors from the U.S.A., where houses with a Presidential association have a great appeal.
William McKinley, American President 1897 - 1901, was the great-great-grandson of James McKinley who emigrated from Conagher, Ballymoney, around 1743. McKinley, who fought in the American Civil War, was the last Civil War veteran to become President. It was in the first year of his second term in office that McKinley was assassinated. He was shot at Buffalo's Pan-American exposition and died eight days later.
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