NILES — From the end of the Civil War in 1865 until 1923, seven of the 12 elected U.S. presidents were born in Ohio — Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft and Warren G. Harding.

On Saturday afternoon at the National McKinley Birthplace Museum, author and historian Heather S. Cole discussed her book, “Ohio’s Presidents,” and told lesser-known facts about these men and their lives. The locale of the talk was significant since McKinley was born in Niles.

“The men behind the presidency. That particularly interested me when I was working on this book, maybe because they are less well-known than some of the other presidents I have researched. I found their personal stories to be a little bit more accessible than Washington or Jefferson, whose stories have been told over and over,” Cole said.

All the presidents in this time span were members of the Republican party in the model of Abraham Lincoln, who was against slavery. The first five were in the Union Army during the Civil War and all of the men were in their late-40s to mid-50s when they entered their presidential term. They were all married with children or stepchildren. Garfield, Harding and McKinley died in office. Garfield and McKinley were shot.

Cole offered some of the following facts from her book.

The 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Army to success in the Civil War, was an unsuccessful farmer. He was uncomfortable using slave labor on his wife’s family farm in Missouri. When his term in office was over, his friend, Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, suggested he write his memoir, which he did until he died of cancer. The book was a bestseller.

The 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes, had the most controversial election until recent times. This was during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War to unite the southern states with the northern ones. Republicans nominated Hayes. Democrats nominated Samuel Tilden from New York.

Tilden won the popular vote and was one vote away from winning the Electoral College. South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida had 19 electoral votes. Controversy continued during the recount concerning ballots that could be thrown out if they were viewed as fraudulent. Ultimately, Hayes won.

James Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was the last president born in a log cabin. In the 1880s, it was not dignified for a president to campaign. Instead, voters who wanted to see and hear the candidate came to his home in Mentor and he gave front porch speeches, becoming the first presidential candidate to do this. After he was shot, it was discovered he could have been saved with antibiotics and a means of sterilization that were not part of the medical field at that time.

The 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison, was from a long line of politicians. His grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was the ninth president of the United States.

The last president to have fought in the Civil War was William McKinley, the 25th president. He had two daughters with his wife, Ida. His second daughter died at 4 months old and then his older child died from typhoid fever. Ida suffered a nervous breakdown and became ill with other ailments after the deaths of her children and her mother. McKinley was a doting husband who planned his schedule around her care. He also campaigned on his front porch in Canton.

William Howard Taft was a reluctant presidential candidate. He was a lawyer and later became a judge. His wife Nellie’s family had visited Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House when she was a teen. Vowing to return, she and her family encouraged him to go into politics. He was the 27th president from 1909 to 1913. Eight years later, President Warren G. Harding gave Taft his dream job of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He is the only person to have been head of two branches of government.

The last of these Ohio presidents, the 29th, was Harding. He came to the office as a newspaperman and not as a lawyer like his predecessors. He and two friends paid $300 for a failing newspaper in Marion. One of his assignments was to cover the 1884 Republican National Convention in Chicago, which sparked his interest in politics. He then campaigned for William McKinley and ran the last of the front porch campaigns.

On Election Day in 1920, Harding’s wife was the first first woman to cast a vote for her husband after the 19ht Amendment was ratified. He had a scandal-filled presidency that did not become known until after his death, mostly because of his friendly relationship with the media.

The most famous was the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which he had an affair with a friend of his wife. He was the third Ohio president to die while in office after having a heart attack while visiting California.

The talk showed that the Ohio presidents dealt with love, loss, success and disappointment similar to other Americans of their time and that history sometimes shows a similarity to modern times.