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Look Back: The marriage of Lt. Ulysses S. Grant and Julia Dent
Date: 8/20/2010 Album ID: 1061137
Photos by Missouri Historical Society, Library of Congress and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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On a hot Aug. 22, 1848 Julia Dent married Lt. Ulysses S. Grant in her family's city residence at 701 South Fourth Street.
Lt. Ulysses S. Grant in 1843, shortly after his graduation from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was born Hiram Ulysses grant in Point Pleasant, Ohio, but arrived at the academy to learn that his appointment papers called him U.S. Grant, a name change he accepted lest he jeopardize his enrollment. To his classmates, he became Sam. Grant was assigned after graduation to Jefferson Barracks, on the Mississippi River in south St. Louis County. One of his roommates at West Point had been Fred Dent, a son of Col. Frederick Dent, who owned 925 acres along Gravois Creek, five miles west of Jefferson Barracks. He often visited the home of his former roommate with fellow officers, including James Longstreet. There, he met Julia Dent, four years his junior. She was witty and was his equal in equestrianship. They often took long rides together along the hills and prairies now known as Affton. In 1844, he proposed to her and gave her his academy ring. Then he shipped off to the Mexican War, where he served with bravery but missed Julia Dent. Upon his return, they were married on Aug. 22, 1848, in the Dent family city residence at 701 South Fourth Street. The home fell into decay and was the subject of private efforts to save it, but the two-story brick home was demolished in 1943. The site is a parking lot one block southeast of Busch Stadium. (Library of Congress)
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Gen. U.S. Grant shortly before he was sworn in as president in 1873. Grant stayed in the Army after his marriage and was promoted to captain. He served on the West Coast while Julia stayed with her family at White Haven. He resigned abruptly in 1854 -- the stories were that his loneliness had led him to liquor -- and returned to St. Louis, where his father-in-law gave them 80 acres along present-day Rock Hill Road, just south of Watson Road. (St. Paul Churchyard cemetery is on part of the tract). Grant called the farm Hardscrabble, and that is where he built his famous cabin. But soon quit farming and went to work in the city as a real-estate agent, and failed in that as well. He and his family were living in Galena, Ill., where his father had a tannery, when the Civil War began in 1861. Grant joined the Illinois Volunteer Infantry as a colonel and rose quickly as he won early battles. Old tales of drunkenness dogged him, but President Abraham Lincoln once defended him bluntly: I can't spare this man. He fights. After great victories at Vicksburg, Miss., and Chattanooga, Tenn., he became commanding general of all Union forces. He stayed with the Army of the Potomac and engineered its long, bloody series of hammer blows against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia across Virginia in 1864-65. Among those who opposed Grant was Gen. James Longstreet, who had been one of Grant's groomsmen at his wedding. Grant was the Republican candidate for president in 1868 and served two terms, but his administration was marred by scandal, especially that of the Whiskey Ring of liquor-tax violations concocted by supposed friends in St. Louis. (Library of Congress)
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Julia Grant in 1873, the year her husband begane his second term as president. Grant may have failed in farming and business, but he was a devoted husband and father to their four children. Ulysses and Julia Grant were devoted to each other throughout their five years of courtship and 36 years of marriage. Julia Grant supported her man, speaking admiringly of him long before and long after his death to throat cancer in 1885 at age 63. Shortly before he died, he finished writing his memoirs at their home in Mt. McGregor, in upstate New York. His tale of the Civil War is a classic in American literature, a straight-forward account with little of the Napoleonic theatrics or self-justifying flapdoodle so common among military men of his era. The book also solved one of his lifelong frustrations and worries -- book sales took good care of his family. (Missouri History Museum)
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The former Dent city home at 701 south Fourth Street, on the southern edge of downtown, in its sad decline as of 1934. At the time, local boosters were trying to save it. (Post-Dispatch)
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A Post-Dispatch drawing of the unveiling on Oct. 21, 1888, of a bronze statue of Gen. Grant in the middle of 12th Street (now Tucker Boulevard), in between Olive and Locust streets. The site was the former Lucas Market (the original reason why Tucker is a wide boulevard). While he was a farmer, he sold cordwood at Lucas Market. Fifteen years later, the statue was moved to the front of City Hall at Tucker and Market Street, where it stands today. (Post-Dispatch)
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Motorists gather on Gravois Road just outside the fence at Grant's Farm, the country estate of August A. Busch Sr., on April 9, 1922, shortly before the centennial of Grant's birth on April 27, 1822. Behind them is the log cabin that Grant built in 1856 on his short-lived farm, Hardscrabble, which was to the northeast on present-day Rock Hill road. Busch's late father, Adolphus Busch, had bought the cabin and moved it to the family estate on Gravois in 1907. It remains part of the public tour of Grant's Farm. (Post-Dispatch)
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Crowds gather for the centennial of Grant's birth at his tomb on the Hudson River in New York on April 27, 1922. The tomb was built with $600,000 raised through the largest fundraiser ever at the time, and was dedicated on April 27, 1897. Julia Grant attended the opening event. She died five years later at age 76 and was entombed next to her husband. (International News Service)
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White Haven, the home of Julia Dent's family, in 1933. Her father, Col. Frederick Dent, bought the home along Gravois Creek in 1820. Around it were his 925 acres of farmland, spread across parts of what now is known as Grant's Farm, Grantwood Village, Sunset Memorial Park and St. Paul Churchyard (the last also being the site of U.S. and Julia Grant's farm, Hardscrabble). When Grant was a young officer stationed at Jefferson Barracks, he rode the five miles to White Haven because one of his West Point roommates, Fred Dent, had grown up there. the Dents treated Grant and the other young officers warmly. It is where Grant met and courted Julia. The home was named a national historic landmark in 1986 and is maintained by the National Park Service. After research on its original paint, the park service covered the old white paint with the Dent's preference, Paris Green. The home is just east of Grant's Farm. (Post-Dispatch)
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The wedding home, 701 South Fourth Street at Cerre Street, in January 1943, shortly before it was demolished. (Post-Dispatch)
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The dedication ceremony on April 27, 1947, of the monument on the former site of the Hardscrabble cabin, in present-day St. Paul Churchyard cemetery on Rock Hill Road. The event was held on Grant's 125th birthday. Cub Scout Wayne Robinson, at the monument, unveiled it. Behind bugler Earl R. Clark is Charles van Ravenswaay, director of the Missouri Historical Society and main speaker at the event. The flag bearer is Wood McComb. The women to the right of the flag are Mrs. Jessie R. Johns, Mrs. Charles H. Wood and Janet Stine, all of the Webster Groves chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution; and Mrs. Claude K. Roland, Missouri regent of the D.A.R. Everyone was embarrassed to learn that the bronze plaque misspelled Ulysses. It was corrected later. The monument remains near the north end of the cemetery, but there is no place to park near it on Rock Hill Road. Many St. Louisans don't know it's there. (Post-Dispatch)
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An honor guard from Scott Air Force Base marches past Grant's cabin during a ceremony dedicating it to public viewing on Sept. 24, 1978. It always had been on the Grant's Farm tour, but visitors weren't allowed inside until Anheuser-Busch Co. spent $200,000 to repair and furnish it in 1978. (Scott Dine/Post-Dispatch)
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White Haven (officially Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, 7400 Grant Rd., Crestwood, MO) across Grant Road from Grant's Farm, has been targeted for completion of the exterior restoration of April 24, 1998. In this picture, front view in the morning. White Haven has been white during the 20th century, but has been restored to its original 19th century Paris Green. Photo taken April 14, 1998.
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