Born in Richland County, Ohio, to Augustus and Martha A. (Barnes) McBride, he was six years old when his father died, and at the age of thirteen he accompanied an uncle to Mahaska County, Iowa,Leander John Monks, Courts and Lawyers of Indiana, Volume 3 (1916), p. 1192. his education principally being obtained in the common schools of Ohio and Iowa.W. W. Thornton, "The Supreme Court of Indiana", Part II, in Horace Williams Fuller, ed., The Green Bag, Vol. IV (1893), p. 274. He taught in Iowa for three years and then returned to Ohio. In 1863 he enlisted in the volunteer service, in Ohio. His company was composed of men selected to serve as bodyguards for President Abraham Lincoln, but it was for a while assigned to other duty in Washington, D.C. McBride served a bodyguard for Lincoln for about six months in 1863, during which time McBride was permanently injured so as to make him unfit for active duty. In January 1865, he was transferred to the War Department at Washington, D.C., where he served until September 1865.
