“On April 27, 1822, Ulysses S. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, tucked away in the rural southwestern corner of the state near Cincinnati. The tiny, boxy house, constructed of wood and painted white, stood a short stroll from the Ohio River with Kentucky clearly visible on the far shore.”
So begins Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow’s acclaimed 2017 biography Grant. It details the life of an ordinary man who became extraordinary by leading the North to victory in the Civil War and becoming the 18th president of the United States.
courtesy of Ohio History Collection
In this 200th anniversary year of Ulysses S. Grant’s birth, his hometown and several nearby communities in the Ohio River Valley are planning an array of birthday celebrations, including concerts, speeches, dances and dinners.
About 40 miles upriver from Point Pleasant in Maysville, Kentucky, attention is being drawn to Grant’s stay there as a student at the private Maysville Academy from 1836-37. He boarded with the widow of his well-to-do uncle, Peter Grant, who is buried in the frontier graveyard behind the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center in Maysville.
“We are excited about presenting to as many people as possible this year the land where Grant was born and grew up,” said Greg Roberts, vice president of Historic New Richmond Inc., a historical society in New Richmond, Ohio, that oversees the Grant birthplace. The society is under the auspices of the Ohio History Connection, a statewide history organization based in Columbus.
Roberts has been associated with the birthplace in the small unincorporated community of Point Pleasant since 1990. Its population is about 50. “In 1922, on Grant’s 100th birthday, more than 30,000 people—along with President Warren G. Harding—came to the birthplace,” said Roberts, surmising that many in the audience were elderly Civil War veterans who wanted to honor Grant.
“I don’t think we will get 30,000 this year, but I do expect many will want to visit the land where Grant lived as a boy. It’s a land rich in history.”
Grant’s Maysville Connections
In their 1983 book Maysville Kentucky: From Past to Present in Pictures, the late Jean Calvert and John Klee, a history professor at Maysville Community and Technical College, included a photo of the Maysville Academy, a two-story brick building at 109 West Fourth Street.
The photo’s caption reads, “In the fall of 1836, Ulysses S. Grant attended classes there. He came from his native Ohio to stay at the home of Peter Grant, his uncle.”
The caption noted that Grant’s nickname at the school was “Toad” and that he was popular with his classmates. Not so well known, the caption said, is that Grant’s father, Jesse Root Grant, came to Maysville in 1810 and worked as an apprentice in Peter Grant’s tannery.
Peter Grant, who also made money in the salt and river shipping businesses, married Permelia Bean in Maysville in 1807. He died in 1825 from drowning in the Kanawha River near what is now Point Pleasant, West Virginia. His widow let 14-year-old Ulysses live with her and her family while he attended the Maysville Academy. Peter and Permelia Grant had 10 children. Her home was on Front Street, where the French Quarter Inn, a popular hotel, is now located.
Young Ulysses may have been exposed to abolitionist ideas in Maysville, since his uncle had been head of the local abolitionist society, said G.L. Corum of West Union, Ohio, author of the 2015 book Ulysses Underground: The Unexplored Roots of U.S. Grant.
“He opposed slavery in the Civil War and as president tried to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan after the war,” Corum said. “He grew up in places, including Maysville, among people who wanted to end slavery without severing the United States.”
In 1829, a local contractor, Thomas D. Richardson, built the Maysville Academy, also known as the Maysville Seminary. Two noted scholars, Jacob W. Rand and William W. Richeson, opened the school in 1830 and served as instructors.
It first was an all-boys’ school but later became coeducational. Other well-known people who attended the school included Walter N. Haldeman, founder and president of Louisville’s Courier-Journal newspaper; William H. Wadsworth, ambassador to Chile; John J. Crittenden, U.S. attorney general; Union Gen. William “Bull” Nelson; Kentucky Poet Laureate Henry Thomas Stanton; and historian Richard H. Collins, the son of Lewis Collins, who wrote the classic work History of Kentucky.
Grant attended the school for one year.
In Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, considered by many to be the best book ever written by a U.S. president, Grant wrote, “From the age of six until seventeen, I attended the subscription schools of the village, except during the winters of 1836-37 and 1838-39. The former period was spent in Maysville, Kentucky, attending the school of Richardson and Rand; the latter in Ripley, Ohio, at a private school. I was not studious in habit, and probably did not make progress enough to compensate for the outlay for board and tuition.”
The Maysville Academy closed in 1868. Over the years, various families lived in the building, which was condemned in 1983. The city took possession of it in 1997 and later razed it.
In 1977, the Kentucky Historical Society installed a marker in front of the former academy. It incorrectly states that Grant stayed with his uncle while attending the school.
After leaving the Maysville Academy, Grant attended the Rev. John Rankin’s academy in Ripley, Ohio, about 10 miles downriver from Maysville. Rankin was involved in the Underground Railroad, and his home, which sits atop a hill at Ripley, provides a magnificent view of the Ohio River.
courtesy of Ohio History Collection
The cottage where Grant was born in Point Pleasant was the home of the Grant family for less than a year. Grant’s father had saved enough money as a tanner to build a tannery of his own in Georgetown, Ohio, about 13 miles north of Ripley.
Grant’s boyhood home and the school he attended in Georgetown will be highlighted in this year’s birthday celebrations.
In 1839, the 17-year-old Grant got an appointment to West Point. He graduated four years later, ranked 21st in a class of 39, and began his military career.
The bright young man who excelled in horsemanship eventually became supreme commander of the Union Army, conqueror of the Confederacy to end the bloodiest conflict in American history and preserve the United States, and president for two terms who worked to heal a nation following the war.
Grant died on July 23, 1885, of throat cancer. About 1.5 million people lined Broadway in New York City to view his 7-mile-long funeral procession. He was buried on Riverside Drive in New York City in what is known as Grant’s Tomb. It is the largest memorial mausoleum in North America and is operated by the National Park Service.