e Grant Family

Ulysses Grant: Poor Family Beginnings
Financially, Ulysses S. Grant was not poor. He came from a working middle class family. It was the family dynamics that were less than inspiring.
Grant was the oldest of six, and would always be amicable with his siblings. It was the parents who were decidedly “peculiar.” Jesse Grant, his father, was a tanner of solid financial means, but he was a bombastic, opinionated man, called by his neighbors a braggart and blowhard. His mother, Hannah Simpson, was really peculiar. She was a cold, emotionless, silent woman who spent her time devoted to household chores and Bible reading. Dinner conversation was sparse. It was a loveless childhood, but Grant didn’t know that.

Ulysses S. Grant: The Affectionate Dents
Ulysses Grant went to West Point, according to his father’s wishes, and against his own inclination. His close friend at the academy, Fred Dent, advised him to stop in and see his folks, if he was stationed in St. Louis.

When Second Lieutenant Grant was indeed deployed in St. Louis, he made it a point to visit the Dent family. They welcomed him warmly. Colonel Dent (an honorary title) was bombastic like Jesse Grant, but the family dynamic was engaging and decidedly affectionate. Grant was immediately invited “not to be a stranger.”

Some weeks later, he met Julia, the Dents’ oldest daughter, recently graduated from a St. Louis finishing school. It was love at first sight for both of them, and after a four years secret engagement, they would enjoy a warm and loving marriage for nearly forty years.

The Grant Family: Second Generation
Ulysses and Julia Grant would have four children. Fred, their eldest, was born when Grant was stationed in the Northeast. When their second son, Ulysses S. Grant Jr.(called Buck from the start) was born, it was a different story. Grant had been deployed to the California territory, and the trip was far too arduous for a pregnant woman and a toddler. He went alone. Julia went back to her family in St. Louis.

Desperately lonely and homesick for the family he had grown to love deeply, and whose love had become essential to his well being, Grant foundered. When Buck was born, Julia sent her husband a letter enclosing a tracing of the baby’s hand. It is said that Grant wept, and Grant was not a weeper.

He resigned from the Army and returned to Julia. Two more children would be born in short order: Ellen (Nellie) and Jesse.

Ulysses and Julia As Parents
Like the Lincolns, the Grants were permissive parents, even to a fault. Their children were given great freedom of expression and activity – and freedom from hard study.

If Grant foundered in California, he failed even more as ex-Captain Grant, aspiring farmer or businessman. He was not lazy; he was not afraid of hard work. But he had no direction or vocation. He also had no luck. For nearly ten years he struggled with little to show for it. Nevertheless, when he entered his little house, he was king of his castle, surrounded by Julia and the children.

When the Civil War began, the family had moved to Galena, Illinois, where Grant had taken a menial position in one of his father’s tanneries. Grant, the ex-West Point Captain, was reinstated in the Union Army, and his rise was the stuff of legends.

His attachment and need for the comfort of family was strong for him to insist they stay close to wherever he was encamped. For four years. Grant’s family were nomads.

The Grant Family: The War Years
As an elderly man, Jesse Grant wrote a memoir, and indicated that during the Civil War, none of the Grant children had much schooling, and nobody named Grant seemed to mind.

Young Fred was eleven when the War began, and at Julia’s urging, Grant took him along. Throughout the War, Fred encamped with the Army whenever practicable. If danger or a battle was imminent, he was sent back to his mother, who was never too far away.

Julia and the four kids stayed with the General on several occasions. Senior officers remember coming into Grant’s tent with the great man on the floor, engaged in horseplay with his sons. They also commented (disapprovingly) of how the boys rummaged through his papers, spilled ink and otherwise behaved like little boys. Neither parent seemed to mind.

The Grant Children
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so they say.

Fred Grant went to West Point, Ulysses Jr. to Harvard and Jesse to Cornell. None were exceptional students.

Nellie Grant married a “titled” Englishman at a lavish White House wedding. She was only seventeen, and the marriage was not a happy one.

Fred married a beautiful Chicago heiress. Both Buck and Jesse would also marry well-to-do women. Being the sons of a Great General and President was a substantial credential.

But it would be the last years of General Grant that would prove the character of all named Grant. Grant’s post-presidential years had started well: a trip around the world, and then, at the behest of his son Buck, a partnership in an investment brokerage, which for a couple of years, boomed.

Grant’s business partner, however, was a scoundrel who had manipulated a Ponzi-like scheme. Grant was financially ruined as was the rest of his family, who had invested heavily. Within months of that fiasco, the aging General was hit with another tragedy: terminal throat cancer.

Determined to repay the brokerage debts and to provide for his family – and to maintain his integrity and good name, he wrote his memoirs. It would be race against the clock.

The family rallied around, helping with research and sparing their father the time-consuming task of greeting the well-wishers who came to pay respects.

Julia Grant was never out of earshot. She would later admit that she never cried in Grant’s presence, saving her tears for later. She had stood by him through good times and bad, some very good and some horribly bad.

All four Grant children, their spouses and grandchildren were close by, and stayed with him till the end – only a week after he had completed the galleys on his memoirs. They made a fortune.

Sources:
GRANT, JESSE R. – In the Days of My Father General Grant – Harper & Brothers, 1925
GRANT, JULIA - The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant, G.P. Putnam’s, 1975
KORDA, MICHAEL - Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero, Eminent Lives Series, Harper Collins, 2004.
McFEELY, WILLIAM S. - Grant: A Biography, W.W. Norton & Co., 1981