Mark Hanna, an Ohio industrialist turned politician, modernized the Republican Party and helped to win the presidency for fellow Ohioan William McKinley in 1896.

Background.

Marcus Alonzo Hanna was born on 24 September 1837 in New Lisbon (later Lisbon), Ohio. When he was fifteen Hanna and his family moved to Cleveland, where Hanna entered Western Reserve College in 1857. In spring 1858 he dropped out of school to work in the family's wholesalegrocery business. During the Civil War Hanna served a few months of 1864 as a lieutenant in an Ohio militia company. In September 1864 a few weeks after he returned to Cleveland, he married C. Augusta Rhodes, daughter of a successful coal and iron merchant and became a partner in the Rhodes family business, Rhodes & Co., which diversified into shipbuilding and became M. A. Hanna 8c Co. in 1885. Hanna became a wealthy man with civic and commercial interests that...