Show GRANT RAN T and aind GALENA ft B NA t bt F 01 ak haa DUKES Grant Memorial home 4 by ELMO SCOTT WATSON date Is april 27 1822 the ar place Is the little backwoods town of point pleasant on the ohio L y river 25 miles east of cincinnati in the home of jesse root grant foreman of a small tannery his wife hannah simpson grant has go presented him with his first child a son eon for the first six weeks of his 0 life e the baby Is nameless father and mother it seems cannot agree upon a name then in the words of W E woodward in hla his biography sleet general grant it was agreed finally to let chance decide the question the assembled relatives so the story runs wrote the names of their choice on slips of paper folded up the slips and drew one it was ulysses the name came that had been proposed by grandmother 8 impson evidently the outcome was not wholly satisfactory to the masculine part of the family somebody who was there succeeded in tacking hiram on in front of ulysses so the child was culled hiram ulysses grant thus th us 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 into the mighty mississippi six miles away a settler from kentucky named thomas january has established a trading post french canadian Cin adlan voy age ngeun ur and american traders call the place jan barys point there Is a good reason for establishing a trading post there away an ay back in 1700 a frenchman named le stier slier ascending the mississippi had discovered indians working rude leid lead mines near this river and in his off iclal report he called it the river of mines later in the century a french trader named la fevre established himself here and the name of fevre fere river was tacked on to the stream american frontiersmen later anglicized that name to th the e fever V ever river and that name with its unpleasant suggestion of III health persisted until 1826 when januarys Janu arys point became known as galena and the fever as the galena river because galena Is the name of the valuable sulphite of lead which was mined there so while ulysses grant Is grow growing ing up into a lusty young manhood back in ohio the trading P post at on the fever river 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 vice versa but the thing which Is bringing a rush of migration there and which would have justified a proud chamber of commerce boast of watch galena growl grow if there had 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 inns began s suffering u 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 dais visited galena and everybody ever body included national and world notables the marquis de lafayette the prince de of the royal roval house of bourbon dolly madison wife of the fourth president of the united states martin van buren and zachary taylor future presidents president mrs alexander hamilton joseph smith mormon prophet charles sumner and jefferson davis then a young oung lieutenant in the united states army but later destined to lead the lost cause of the confederacy by 1860 galena had 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 a century it would become a town that had died on its feet a quiet little village resembling nothing so much as nn an old man basking in the sunshine and dreaming of the day of his youth it could not have known that it would come to be famous principally through the linking 1 of its nime name with ft ath the name of a man who had not yet iet walked through its narrow winding streets str gets 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 fer prise prine 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 song jesse cesae root boot and samuel simpson to open a leather store in the illinois town so galena could not realize the importance to it of an event which took place in april 1800 hamlin garland in his life of grant 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 up to the wharf attention was attracted to a passenger on the deck wearing a blue cape overcoat As the boat struck the landing thi man rose and gathered a number of chairs together evidently part of his household furniture who Is that asked one man of a friend on the river bank that Is captain grant jesse grants oldest son lie he was in the mexican war NIX F arc erected in honor of granta 1665 A 4 ft 30 G ti static in mot gramit park va 0 1 1 47 C 0 4 di i ia J A 14 4 A azelic of gramit the BUSI grave of samuel linuel 5 grant he Is moving here from st louis was the reply captain grant took a couple of chairs in each hand and walked ashore with them h his s wife a small alert woman followed him w with th her 11 little t tle flock four children frederick ulysses jesse and daughter nellie 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 hiram 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 made but 11 little atle I 1 impression m in his new surroundings there was nothing about him to mark him as a man of destiny hut but lie he did make some strong friends among them ellhu n B washburne state senator john A rawlins a farmer and self educated lawyer W it rowley clerk of the circuit court and ana dr edward kittoe an englishman by birth hut but a naturalized american E even ven when the event camp came which was to set his feet firmly on the ladder of fame grant was still pretty much of a nonentity in G galena al ena at the news of the firing on F fort ort sumter a mass meeting was called in the courthouse and at that meeting grant offered his west point training and his big mexican VM experience for the service of his country in the new crisis when some mome one criticized the offer because of the likelihood of grants sympathy for the hie south since he came from st louis and it was reported that his wife owned two to slaves sla es immediately wayburne Wah burne and rawlins came to the defense with the emphatic statement that any man who will try to stir up tip party prejudices at such a time as this Is a traitor I 1 so at a later meeting to raise volunteers grant was made chair chairman ninn and within a few days he be was busy drilling troops on the broad lawn which surrounded the southern colonial home of washburne lie he was offered the captaincy of the volunteer company that galena raised hut but refused it although lie he announced his intention ot of going to springfield with the company ills departure from galena was aa almost an ag unmarked as his arrival had been he simply walked from ills his home to the illinois central depot over a miserable pathway through the muddy streets of the town carrying a little satchel in its his hand ills 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 cl civilian clothes in 1861 was welcomed back with wild acclaim from all over the west thousands came to join with galena in honoring her first citizen across I 1 thin street in front of the de soto house was an immense arch hearing bearing the inscription hall to the chief who in triumph ad vanchal vanc cal esl galena further honored its returned hero by buying a flue fine brick house located on a lilg hig hill east cast of the river and presenting it to him for his home there the grants themselves and took a loading leading part in galena society until hla big election to the prec presidency ledency in isoa again in 1870 lie he was given a great reception after his trip around the world at the conclusion of his two terms in tiie the white house once more he settled down in galena only to find the quiet life which lie he had anticipated disrupted by the insistence of his friends that hebe hebe a candidate for a third ter term grant who was sitting in the office of his friend rowley ottley ll when the news was brought to him that the republican convention had denied him the nomination and given it to garfield had bad just lighted one of his famous cigars walking out to the sidewalk lie stood for a moment in thought then thed 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 said quietly by it I 1 shall escape tour four years ears of hard work and four years ears 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 the end of grants public career Is one of the grant relies relics which Is preserved in galena to this day da but it Is only one of the many which you find on every hand A modern paved highway leads you ou into galena but the moment you ou enter the town you realize the aptness of so description of galena galem 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 same streets along which walked the notables of a century ago but the booming river town of those da lays a to Is no more the river itself that was feet wide in 1844 Is but a thin trickle now barely knee deep the levee where once scores of packet boats tied up Is gone for once yo you u realize that the much overworked words of sleepy and quaint as applied to a little town tonn are true because galena Is both there are innumerable landi landmarks narks which stand unchanged by the years to 0 o take you back to another century they suggest innumerable interesting te stories of frontier times in illinois of the da days a of the voyageur voyage ur arnd the trader of the indian wars of the old steamboat river days but dominating them all Is the memory of one man a late comer in the history of galena to whom galena clings as a giving it now its only claim to fame it Is the memory of grant galena will show you the store in which grant giant clerked and the first methodist episcopal church in which grant and life his family worshiped worship od they will take you jou up tip along the street of the generals find and point out to you ou the homes of rawlins and rowley who wore were generals general on grants staff luring during the war and that of its his friend doctor kittoe who became medical director of the army of the tennessee with the rank of lieutenant co colonel lunel they will take you out to the cemetery and show you oj where rests the only grant who stayed staged in galena samuel simpson grant ulysses brother who died in september 1861 and Is burled there through the prine principal apal park in the town named for the general and dominated by bj a browe brome statue of him they will lead you up the hill the brick house which galena once gave gare to her distinguished citizen and which his son on heu gen frederick dent grant gave back bac t to 0 galena to be preserved its as a grant memorial there you ion may look upon innumerable relies relics of the citizen the soldier and the president and his family for it la is furnished and kept as it was when the grants occupied it in fact tharp Is 1 scarcely a place in the town but that lias has its memento of him or can contribute some incident to the story of hla his career grant and galena galena and grant the words have become inseparable ills ashes may rest in tho the magnificent tomb on riverside drive in new york city but the living memory of him can call be found only in a little illinois town where time stands still T by western ne Nip pa pr P union |