Show RANT and nd y GALENA AL NA I 1 1 W till elji 31 H VA AA tn tur irr w 0 IN trl V rantee morial home 7 by ELMO SCOTT WATSON rw BS date Is april 27 1822 the place Is 1 the little backwoods town of point pleasant ant on oa the ohio I 1 river ab 25 miles east of cincinnati in the home of jesse jease root boot grant foreman of a small tannery his wife hannah simpson grant has presented him with his first child a son for the first six weeks of his life the baby Is nameless father and mother it seems cannot agree upon a name dame then in the words of IV E woodward in his biography meet general grant it was agreed finally to let chance decide the question the assembled relatives so the story runs wrote the names dames of their choice on slips blips of paper folded up ip the slips and drew one it was ulysses the came that had been proposed by grandmother simpson evidently the outcome was not wholly factory to the masculine part of the family somebody who was there succeeded in tacking hiram on in front of ulysses so the child was called hiram ulyces grant thus the first chapter in the story of a man and a town the scene shifts now to the north and west some ome miles on a high point of land rising abruptly from a little river which empties late into the mighty mississippi six all miles away a settler from kentucky named thomas january has established a trading post french canadian voy agdur and american traders call the place jan barys point there Is a good reason for establishing a trading post there away back in 1700 a frenchman named le ascending the mississippi bad discovered indians working rude lead mines cear this river and in his official report he called it the river of mines later in the century a french trader na named la fevre established himself here and the hie name of fevre river was tacked on to the stream american frontiersmen later anglicized that name to the fever river and that name with its unpleasant suggestion of ill health persisted until 1826 1326 when januarys Janu arys point became known as galena and the fever river as the galena river because galena Is the name of the valuable sulp sulphite litte of lead which wa mined there so go while ulysses grant Is growing up into a lusty young manhood back in ohio the trading post on the fever river la Is growing into the lusty little settlement of galena in the new state of illinois more trading posts are established because this Is still the heart of the indian country and the red man has many things the white man wants and vlee vice versa but the thing which to Is bringing a rush of migration there and which would have justified a proud chamber of commerce boast of watch galena grow growl if there bad been chambers of commerce in those days Is the lead mining industry next to st louis galena was the most important town in the west and Galen ians ions began suffering buffering from delusions of grandeur they boastfully predicted that it would soon overshadow the old french and spanish metropolis to the south had some one told them that it would soon be displaced in importance by a little town named chicago which squatted down among the marshes on the shores of lake michigan they would have laughed long and loud for everybody who went west in those days visited galena and everybody included national and world notables the marquis de lafayette the prince de Joine vUle of the royal house bouse of bourbon dolly madison wife of the fourth president of the united states martin van buren and zachary taylor future presidents mrs alexander hamilton joseph smith mormon prophet charles sumner and jefferson davis then a young lieutenant in the united states army but later destined to lead the lost cause of the confederacy by 1860 galena had bad reached the apex of its fame and its claim to distinction at that time it had no way of knowing that in less than half bait a century it would become a town that had died on its feet a quiet little village resembling nothing so BO much as an old man basking in the sunshine and dreaming of the days of his bis youth it could not have known that it would come to be famous principally through the linking of its name with the name of a roan man who bad not yet walked through its narrow winding streets it probably had never heard of the town of point pleasant ohio and certainly the birth of a son to jesse and hannah grant there on april 27 1822 meant nothing to galena except for the adding of another business enterprise ter prise to its list it meant nothing more to galena when the elder grant then owner of a tannery lu in covington ky sent his two sons gons sense jesse root and samuel simpson to open a leather store in the illinois town so go galena could not realize the importance to it of an event which tool took place in april 1860 hamlin garland in his life of grant describes describe it as follows men stood on the levee watching the steamer itasca while she nosed her way up the tortuous current of the galena river as she swung tip ID to the wharf attention lon was attracted to a passenger on the deck wearing a blue cape overcoat A As 9 the boat air struck uck the landing this man tose lose and gathered a number of chairs together evidently purt part of his household furniture who Is that asked one man of a friend on an the river bank that la is captain grant jeme grants oldest son lie he was in the mexican war 4 arch erected in honor of grants grant 1865 a 1 0 0 agi statue in cratit pa rk 1040 10 40 it ba aleas I 1 ajr 0 A 3 0 m af sia si A 71 iff 4 w if 3 41 6 61 VM ew 1 q 7 wg A A relic of grant the ma man n grave or 5 irn apon grant he is moving here from st louis was the re reply ply captain grant took a couple of chairs in each hand band and walked ashore with them his wife a small alert woman follo followed Aed him with her little lock flock four children frederick ulysses jesse and daughter nellie neille the carrying of the chairs ashore signified that ulysses simpson grant had become a resident of galena so ulysses simpson grant the change from niram ulysses to ulysses simpson had taken place during his west point days this army captain who at forty was a failure at everything he had attempted became a clerk in his brothers leather store at the munificent salary of a year apparently he be made but little impression in his bis new surroundings there was nothing about him to mark him as a man of destiny but he did make some strong friends among them ellhu elihu B washburne state senator jolin john A rawlins a farmer and self educated lawyer W R rowley clerk of the circuit court and dr edward kittoe an englishman by birth but a naturalized american even when the event came which was to set his feet firmly on the ladder of fame grant was still pretty much of a nonentity in galena at the news of the firing on fort sumter a mass meeting was called in the courthouse and at that meeting grant offered ills his west point training and ills his mexican war experience for the service of his country in the new crisis when some gome one criticized the offer because of tile the likelihood of grants sympathy for the south since he came cama from st loula louis and it was reported that his alg wife owned two slaves immediately washburne and rawlins came to the defense with the emphatic statement that any man who will try to stir up party prejudices at such a time as this to la a traitor 1 so at a later meeting to raise volunteers grant was made chairman and within a few days lie he was busy drilling troops on the broad lawn which surrounded the southern colonial home of washburne he was offered the captaincy of the volunteer company that galena raised but refused it although he be announced his intention tell tiOn of going to springfield with the company his departure from galena was aras almost as ag unmarked as his arrival had been ile he simply walked from his home borne to the illinois central depot over a miserable pathway through ali the muddy streets of the town carrying a little satchel in his hand ills his leave taking was unnoticed and when the war was over and the victorious general returned to his home in galena the man who had slipped away so quietly in civilian clothes in was welcomed back with wild acclaim from all over the west thousands came to join with galena in honoring her first citizen across maln street in front of the de soto goto house was an immense arch bearing the inscription hall to the chief who ho in triumph advances vanc esl 1 galena further honored its returned resumed hero by buying a fine brick house located on a big hill east of the river and presenting it to him for his home there the grants established themselves and took a leading part in galena society until hla his election to the presidency in 1808 8 again in 1870 he was wa given a great grear reception after his bis trip around the w world orld at the conclusion con clu of his two terms in the white house once moro more he settled down in galena only to find the quiet life which he had anticipated disrupted by the insistence of his friends that he be a candidate for a third term grant who was sitting in the office of his friend romley how ley ihben iea the news was brought to I 1 him that the republican convention had denied him the nomination and given it to garfield had just lighted one of ills his famous cigars walking out to the sidewalk lie he stood tor for a moment in thought then tossed the cigar in the street turned and went back into the office 1 I cant say that I 1 regret my own defeat he be said aule quietly aly by it I 1 shall escape tour four years of hard work and four years of abuse and gentlemen we can all support the candidate across the street was a jewelry store when the son of the proprietor saw grant throw away his cigar he sent a clerk to retrieve it that cigar the symbol of tile the end of grants public career Is one of the grant relics which Is preserved in galena to this day but it Is only one of the many which aich you find on every band A modern paved highway leads you into galena but the moment you enter the town you realize the aptness of so description of galena as a town where time stands still the crooked narrow streets which wind in and out among the old stone and brick houses are the j same streets along which walked the notables of a century ago cut but the booming river r town of those days to is no more the river itself that was feet wide in 1841 Is but a thin trickle now barely the levee where once scores of packet boats tied up is golie cone for once you realize that the much overworked words of sleepy and quaint as applied to a little town are true because galena Is both there are arc innumerable landmarks which stand unchanged by the years to take you back to another century they suggest innumerable interesting te stories of frontier times in illinois of the days of the ind the trader of the indian wars of the old steamboat river days but dominating them allis all Is the memory of one man a late comer in the history of galena to whom galena clings as giving it now its only claim to fame it Is the memory of grant galena will show you the store sn go which grant clerked and the first methodist episcopal church in which grant and ills his family worshiped they will take you up lip along the street of the generals and point out to you the homes ot of rawlins and rowley who were nere generals on grants staff during tile the war and that of his bli friend doctor kittoe who became medical director of the army of the tennessee with the rank of lieutenant colonel they will take you out to the cemetery and show you where rests the only grant who stayed in galena Oft lena samuel simpson grant ulysses brother who nho died in september 1861 and Is burled buried there through the principal park in the town named for the general and dominated by a bronce statue of him they wit will lead you up the hill the brick house which galena galena once gave to her distinguished citizen and which his son gen frederick dent grant gave back to galena to be preserved as aa a grant memorial there you way may look upon innumerable relics of tile the citizen the soldier and the president and ill hla family tor for it Is furnished and kept as it was W when the hie grants occupied it in fact there is 1 scarcely a place in the town but that has its memento of him or can contribute some incident to tile the story of hla his career grant and galena galena and grant tile the words have become inseparable ills his ashes in the magnificent tomb may rest on riverside drive in new york tork city but the living memory of him can be found only in a little illinois town where time stands glands still 0 by warn union |