THE CENTRE
PA.
WH
Grant. Memorial Home
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON
HE date is April 27, 1822. The
place is the little backwoods town
of Point Pleasant on the Ohlo
river, 25 miles east of Cincinnatl,
In the home of Jesse Root 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 | name,
Then, In the words of W. 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 of their choice on slips of paper, folded
up the slips, and drew one. It was Ulysses, the
hame that had been proposed by Grandmother
Bimpson. 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
called Hiram Ulysses Grant.”
Thus, the first chapter in the story of a man
and a town,
The scene shifts now to the north and west
some 450 miles. On a high point of land rising
abruptly from a little river which empties into
the mighty Mississippi six miles away, & settler
from Kentucky, named Thomas January, has es
tablished a trading post. French-Canadian voy.
ageur and American traders call the place Jan-
uarys Point.
There Is a good reason for establishing a trad-
ing post there. Away back in 1700 a French.
man named Le Suer, ascending the Mississippi,
bad discovered Indians working rude lead mines
near this river and in his official report he
called it the River of Mines. Later In the cen-
tury a French trader named La Fevre estab-
lished himself here and the 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 1828 when
Januarys Point became known as Galena and
the Fever river as the Galena river, because
galena is the name of the valuable sulphite of
lead which was mined there.
Bo while Ulysses Grant Is growing up into a
lusty young manhood back in Ohlo, the trading
post on the Fever river is growing into the lusty
little settlement of Galena In the new state of
Illinois. More trading posts are established. bee
cause this is still the heart of the Indian coun
try, 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 com-
merce boast of “Watch Galena grow!” (if there
had been chambers of commerce in those days),
is the lead mining industry.
Next to St. Louis, Galena was the most Im-
portant town In the West and Galenians began
suffering from delusions of grandeur. They
boastfully predicted that it would soon overs
shadow 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 Mich-
Igan, they would have laughed long and loud.
For everybody who went West In those days
visited Galena. And “everybody” Included na-
tional and world notables—the Marquis de La-
fayette, the Prince de Joineville of the royal
House of Bourbon, Dolly Madison, wife of the
fourth President of the United States, Martin
Yan Buren and Zachary Taylor, future Presidents,
Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, Joseph Smith, Mormon
prophet, Charles Sumner, and Jefferson Davis,
then a young leutenant in the United States
army but later destined to lead the Lost Cause
of the Confederacy. By 1800 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 an old man bask.
Ing In the sunshine and dreaming of the days
of his youth. It could not have known that it
would come to be famous principally through the
Mnking of its name with the name of a man
who had not yet walked through its narrow,
winding streets. It probably had never heard
of the town of Point Pleasant, Ohlo, and cer
tainly 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 en-
terprise to its list, it meant nothing more to
Galena when tile elder Grant, then owner of
& tannery in Covington, Ky., sent his two sons,
Jesse Root 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, 1860. Hamlin Garland
in his “Life of Grant” describes it as follows:
“Men stood on the levee watching the steamer
‘Itasca’ while she nosed her way up the tore
tuous 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 over.
cont. As the boat struck the landing this 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
Grant's oldest son; he was in the Mexican war
Statue in
Grant Park
+ :
{or mize on
A FS
pe hl
AE
—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: his wife,
a small alert woman, followed him with her
little flock (four children, Frederick, Ulysses,
Jesse and daughter, Nellie), The carrying of the
chairs ashore signified that Ulysses
Grant had become a resident of Galena”
So Ulysses Simpson Grant (the change from
Hiram Ulysses to Ulysses Simpson had taken
place during his West Point days) this Army cap-
tain who at forty was a failure at everything
he had attempted, became a clerk in his broth.
ers’ leather store at the munificent salary of
$000 a year. Apparently he made but little im.
pression In his new surroundings. There was
nothing about him to mark him as a man of
destiny. But he did make some strong friends
among them Elihu B. Washburne, state senator,
John A. Rawling, a farmer and self-eduented
lawyer; W. R. Rowley, clerk of the Circait court,
and Dr. Edward Kittoe, an Englishman by
birth but a naturalized American.
Even when the event came which was to pot
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 celled in the courthouse and at that
meeting Grant offered his West Point training
and his Mexican war experience for the service
of his country in the new crisis. When some one
criticized the offer because of the likelihood of
Grant's sympathy for the South since he came
from St. Louls and It was reported that his
wife owned two slaves, Immediately Washburne
and Rawling came to the defense with the em
phatic statement that “Any man wio will try to
stir up party prejudices at such a time as this
is a traitor!™
80 at a later meeting to ralse volunteers Grant
was made chairman and within a few days
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 announced his in.
tention of going to Springfield with the com.
pany. His departure from Galena was almost as
unmarked as his arrival had been. He simply
walked from his home to the Illinois Central
depot over a miserable pathway through the
muddy streets of the town, carrying a little
satchel In his hand. His leave-taking was “un.
noticed and unhonored.”
When the war was over and the victorious
general returned to his home in Galena, the man
who had slipped away so quietly in eivillan
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 Main street in front of the De
Soto house was an Immense arch bearing the in.
scription “Hail to the chief who In triumph ad.
vances I”
Galena further honored its returned hero by
buying a fine brick house, located on a hig hill
east of the river, and presenting it to him for
his home. There the Grants established them.
selves and took a leading part In Galena society
until his election to the Presidency in 1808
Again In 1870 he was given a great reception
after his trip around the world at the conclu
sion of his two terms in the White House, Once
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 can
didate for a third term,
Simpson
was sitting In the office of his
whet news was brought to
an convention had denied
nd given it to Garfield, had
fust 1 * of his famous cigars. Walking
out to the sidewalk he stood for a moment in
thought, then tossed the cigar in ths street,
turned and went back into the office. "1 can't
say that I regret m3
“By it 1 shall escape 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
own defeat,” he sald quietly.
*
When
the son of the proprietor saw Grant throw aw ay
his cigar he sent a clerk to retrieve it. That
igar, the symbol of the end of Grant's public
career, is one of the Grant relics which Is pre
served in Galena to this day But KK I= only
one of the many which you find on every hand,
A modern paved highway
Galena, but the moment you enter the town, you
leads you into
realize the apiness of someone's 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
game streets along which walked the notables of
8 century ago. But the booming river town of
those days is no more, The river itself, that was
850 feet wide In 1844, 1s but a thin trickle now,
barely kneedeep. The levee where once scores
of packet boats tied up is gone. For once yon
realize that the much overworked words of
sleepy” and “quaint” as applied to a “little
town” are true because Galena is both.
There are innumerable landmarks which stand
unchanged by the years to take you back to
another century. They suggest innumerable in-
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 giving It now its only
claim to fame, It is the memory of Grant.
Galena will show you the store in which
Grant clerked and the First Methodist Episcopal
church in which Grant and his family worshiped,
Grant's staff during the war, and that of his
friend Doctor Kittoe, who became medical di
rank of lieutenant colonel, |
‘They will take you out to the cemetery and
show you where rests “the only Grant who
stayed In Gaiena”—Samuel Simpson Grant,
Ulysses’ brother, who dled in September, 1501,
and is buried there. Through the principal park
in the town, named for the general and dom-
inated by a bronge statue of him, they will lead
you up the hill the brick house which Galena
once gave to her distinguished citizen and which
his son, Gen. Frederick Dent Grant, gave back to
Galena to be preserved as a (Grant memorial
There you may look upon innumerable relics of
the citizen, the soldier and the President and his
family, fof It Is furnished and kept as It was
when the Grants occupied it,
Im fact, there is scarcely a place In the town
but that has Ite memento of him or can con-
tribute some Incident to the story of his careosr,
Grant and Galena, Galena and Grante-the words
have become inseparable. His ashes may rest
in the magnificent tomb on Riverside Drive in
New York eity, but the living memory of him ean
be found only in a little Illinois town “where
time stands still”
» (0 by Waptarn Newspaper Union.)
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cross. Doctors have said so;
men and women everywhere
Chinese Leaders Split
on Educational Plans
most nations dis
klore, but
» government
and Literature
» government
for food . . . but for work and play
~don't
about it!
One of the most famous tonics for
ness, “nerves,”
s Fellows’ Syrup. It sti
i
weake
will prove that “Fellows”
for "building up.” That is why #8
femuine
Duly Attested
When Judge Fletcher Riley, Okla.
homa
went fishing at Galveston and land
y
Supreme court magistrate,
a box to Mrs Riley in Oklahoma
City.
attached an affidavit with fourteen
signatures attested by
that accompanied the jurist on his
trip. “Justice Riley cansht this, we
saw him,” the affidavit read.
On the outside of the box was
An Umbrella Borrower
Wife (as visitor departs) —Just see
him past the umbrella stand.—Hu-
morist,
When you read a blurb that the
novel Is “a story fhrilllsg with the
exultant joy of physical life,” you
ean bet it is pretty odious,
Grewsome Death Watch
Paralyzed by feaf, an old woman
of Bayeux, France, lay in bed and
{ watched her husband hang himself.
Even after he was dead, when she
found sufficient strength to get up,
ghe did not cut the cord, but lit two
candies, one on each side of the
body. Finally, neighbors, anxious at
not seeing the old couple, entered
the house and found the old woman
on her knees before the body sus
pended above her in the candle light.
Bills Ignored
Herduppe—1 have nothing but
praise for the work of my tailor.
Cashdowne-—Yes, so the tallor tol@
me. Farm Journal,
It iz easy to begin loafing, but it's
hard to stop.
Mothers!
Curticura Sear
Used Daily
Protects the Skin
and Keeps It Healthy
Every member of the family
should use Cuticura Soap
regularly.
Bb IT Sr:
the columns this
. It buys space and