6th-Election Day, McKinley & Hobart elected.
Missouri voted for Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan, and in Livingston County, Bryan beat McKinley by less than 50%. Hobart died of heart disease in November of 1899, so the Republican national convention chose Theodore Roosevelt as his running mate. Why Jesse didn’t mention Roosevelt is a little odd. He also didn’t say how he voted, or how his male family members voted. However, Jesse’s father was a Union veteran of the Civil War and a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. McKinley was also a member of the G.A.R. and with the exception of Democrat Grover Cleveland, all of the elected presidents (Chester Arthur was not elected) between Grant and McKinley had to have the G.A.R. endorsement before becoming the Republican nominee. James Bench could have voted like the G.A.R. for Republican McKinley, or he could have voted like the majority of Missouri and gone with Bryan, and either way it wouldn’t necessarily dictate how his sons and sons-in-law voted.
It would have been interesting to know where the Bench members voted. Did they vote in Utica or Chillicothe? How and when did Jesse find out who had been elected? He or other family members would have to be at a central location where that communication would have been received and passed on to other people.
Update: Carmen Dawkins Burgett, 92 year-old Bench-Dawkins matriarch and eldest granddaughter of Jesse and Mary, told Nathan Haley that the Bench family voted Republican, and the Dawkins family voted Democrat, so it might be safe to say the Bench men voted for McKinley.
