USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 38
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 38
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
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In 1805, Thomas Page came from Burlington, New Jersey, to be a part of the Jersey Settlement, founded by Rev. John Collins. In 1807, on the west Fork of Poplar Creek in Tate township, he began a brick house that was enlarged in 1811, so as to be one of the most substantial houses in all the coun- try for many miles around. In 1815, Page went to Point Pleasant, where he built the third house, opened the first store, and established a tannery. In the fall of 1818. John and Sarah Simpson came from Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, to Tate township with a well grown family, and made their home in the house built by Page. Meanwhile, Jesse R. Grant came from Ravenna, Ohio, to work at his trade in a tannery at Beth- el. There were no foolish frills on those people who expected to succeed with labor on the farm or in the shop. Nor were they low spirited, for they were associates of the first and took part in the best that was doing. On June 24, 1821, Jesse R. Grant and Hannah Simpson were married in her father's home, which has thus become famous as the John Simpson home, where Hannah had grown as a lovely, unpretending country girl, who never lost the sweet simplicity of her ways. Yet, she was not unknown, for only six months before, she was the brides- maid of Julia, the daughter of Senator Thomas Morris, at her marriage to the brilliant Dr. John G. Rogers, where the noted and eloquent Rev. George. S. Light was the minister. These young people rated as simply good with none better. When housekeeping quickly began, the young couple went down to the mouth of Indian Creek and rented the tannery, built by Page, and not a log hut as often told, but a strong frame house, covered with good full inch Alleghany pine, and con- taining two nice rooms with a cellar, where none of their sim- ple needs were stinted. The wife came from a home a few miles away, teeming with pioneer abundance. The husband overflowed with a sagacious energy that cleared fifty dollars a month. There, on April 27, 1822, a boy was born, whose main name was Ulysses. The other name was much discussed then and long after. After twenty-two months at Point Pleasant, Jesse Grant found that he had cleared eleven hun- dred dollars, of which one thousand was in silver, which proves that he was one in a thousand. He then left the mouth of In- dian Creek and went across to White Oak, where the new
JOHN SIMPSON HOME. Where General Grant's Mother Lived and Was Married, Near Bantam, Ohio. Burned Down in 1896.
BIRTHPLACE OF GEN. U. S. GRANT.
Old Gentleman at the Gate is Dr. Levi Rogers, Attending Physician at General Grant's Birth.
www.p.S.r
GEN. U. S. GRANT, HIS BOYHOOD HOME AND THE TANNERY, GEORGETOWN, OHIO.
By Permission.
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county seat of Brown was to be. There he started with the beginnings of Georgetown and grew with its growth. From his coming in the Spring of 1823, until his return to Bethel, in 1840, little of any business consequence in Georgetown es- caped Jesse Grant's critical attention. For seventeen years were to pass in Brown county, before the Grant family returned to Clermont.
Of the eleven hundred dollars taken to Georgetown, a part was used to build a small two-story brick house, one of the first brick houses in the place. With a hope of expansion it was set well back from the street. A brick tan house was built. Still later a farm was bought, and the horses for its use were the constant companions of the growing boy, who rode and broke the colts. He drove them single and double, and as soon as he could hold the plow handles, he followed in the furrow. He hauled bark for the tannery, and wood for the many fires, and delivered the products of the farm and shop. From ten to seventeen he did all that a man would have done in the same duties. He detested the tan yard, but was obedient to its requirements. But all work afield or with team was cheerfully done. His father's carriage was in frequent request for, the travellers, and this afforded not only the most pleasing of all service, but developed an intuitive sense of topography that in after life was one of his rarest gifts.
Ulysses Grant was constantly taught by a careful father that industry guided by brains is the key to success. Yet, it was not all work and no play. It was common to see "Lyss" standing on his horse galloping to and from the farm. While the boy grew, the father prospered. The house was soon built out to the original plan, and when finished, was so far above the average that it brought envy upon the owner. In- justice has been done to Jesse Grant by those who never took the trouble to learn the truth. He has been called unstable, because he moved from town to town, yet, every change was profitable. He was called illiterate, yet, he read everything with- prodigious memory from Pope's Homer to the Messages of the Presidents, which were the limits of human inquiry in the Georgetown of his day. He was a master of vigorous cor- respondence, and his penmanship is marvelously like that of his son. His virtues were integrity, industry, firmness, frugali-
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ty and a boundless confidence in his family. No one doubted his word or liked to oppose his iron will. Once in an official meeting of his church, he found himself in a minority of one, that no discussion could change. "Very well," he said, "you take your way and I'll go mine." Then picking up his hat, he walked out with the appearance of having received a vote of thanks. Still, he was generous, when his way was not in question. His chief defect was a loquacious vanity that often exceeded the approval of his neighbors. Ulysses saw this defect and went to the opposite in cultivating his chief and beautiful inheritance from his mother, than whom no rarer flower of modesty has ever bloomed. In most other respects, father and son were much alike. Everyone in Georgetown loved Aunt Hannah and liked Lyss; but there were many crows to pick with the boss of the tan yard.
Some hundred rods away on the brow of the hill south of the Grant home was a little red brick school house of a once common type. But of them all, not another can show such ample fruits. For it not only trained Grant, but also another Major-General of the regular army, an Admiral and a Com- modore of the navy, two Brigadier-Generals, and more fine officers, judges and members of Congress than could have stood together on its platform. It can not be said that these men owed promotion to their illustrious school mate, for some gained place sooner than he. That school house was once the kindgom of Teacher John D. White, the father of General Carr B. White and Member of Congress, Chilton A. White. Under Teacher White, and with his sons, Ulysses Grant spent seven or eight winters in an unrelenting struggle with the ru- diments, for his father was not careless about those things.
He was not studious ; horse boys never are. But he excelled in mental arithmetic, of which his perception seemed intui- tive, He filled the slates of the smaller boys with pictures of wonderful horses-running, leaping, neighing horses-and flowers and pretty things. He was best with pen or pencil of any in the 'school. He also studied grammar until he almost believed that "a noun is a name of a thing." Hannah Grant so trained her boy that he could truthfully write near the close of his tumultuous life that he never uttered a profane word. He is one of three West Pointers of whom that can be told.
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Stonewall Jackson was the second. The name of the third is not handy.
He was a quiet, amiable, shrinking, yet well possessed boy, who never did much that was wrong, because he was kept very busy doing that which was right. After his team and colt were fed and groomed, and wood was sawed and carried in, and supper was over. there was just time enough before early breakfast for hearty sleep. Running around at night was not forbidden, because it was not a question in his busy home. He was sent to spend his fifteenth winter in a boarding school at Maysville and his sixteenth winter in another school at Ripley, where he thumbed the books already learned by heart, while he longed to be with his horses. The real benefits of a fine practical example for American boys have been marred by the published bosh about Grant's meager opportunities. His physical, moral, mental and business training was that of an excellent, comfortable family of the great common people, where nothing useful was beneath his attention and nothing worthy above his ambition.
Thomas Morris fostered a debating society in Bethel in which Thomas L. Hamer and Jesse R. Grant were ardent mem- bers and actors. In a similiar society at Georgetown, the de- bates between the Jacksonian Hamer and the Whiggish Grant became too personal for close friendship. The Free Soil democ- racy of Morris formed another angle of difference in which there was little political hope for the Whigs. After this con- dition had grown more strenuous, Mrs. Bailey tearfully told Mrs. Grant, across the garden fence between their homes, that her son had failed at West Point. Mrs. Grant sorrowfully mentioned the confidential news to her husband, who took a much less sympathetic and far more personal interest. for the next mail took a request to Senator Morris for the appoint- ment of Ulysses to the vacancy so opportunely discovered. Morris replied that the appointment belonged to Hamer to whom the request must be made. With characteristic deter- mination to follow any earnest purpose, Jesse Grant reluctantly but resolutely wrote to Hamer for the appointment. Mean- while, with earlier information of young Bailey's failure, Ha- mer wrote to Teacher John D. White, asking him to suggest a boy for the vacancy, and the name returned by Teacher White
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was Ulysses Grant. Senator Morris, mindful of the worth of John Simpson, the excellence of Hannah, and the forceful na- ture of Jesse Grant and remembering the bright, modest lad, went to Hamer to urge the appointment, saying that he rare- ly failed in sizing boys, of which Hamer himself was a proof. Thus influenced by real affection for his old patron and law perceptor, by Teacher White, and by the chance of making the independent tanner a suppliant, Hamer consented, but re- quired, as was just, that an application should be made directly to him. Grant's application was not received by Hamer until the closing hours of his Congressional duties. of which the last was to sign the nominating papers which were sent to Grant at Georgetown. Hamer traveled home faster than his letter, and, as neither knew how the other stood, both were chagrined and stood apart. Grant thought his request refused, while Ha- mer considered the father ungrateful. The arrival of the letter put the affairs straight. But in making out the appointment, instead of Hiram Ulysses, Hamer forgetfully wrote Ulysses Simpson, which the War Department refused to correct, and so it was accepted.
The boy born in Clermont, who went from Georgetown after sixteen years of happy, wholesome, vigorous, innocent growth there, and who thus entered the door of eternal fame, was a full-set and healthy body with shoulders that drooped beneath a large head with a heavy suit of reddish brown hair framing a round face of fair, but slightly freckled, complexion. The height over all was hardly more than five feet, and the effect was that of an undersized but independent country lad. There was much strength in the full chin, but the blue eyes, with a shade of hazel, had a sad, appealing, almost pathetic expression that easily changed to one of amiable interest which revealed how much he obtained from that pure, gentle, serene person, whom all but her own children called "Aunt Hannah," be- cause they could not call her mother.
He showed neither enthusiasm nor indifference. What he had to do was done. At school he had much of the abstracted manner of later life. After "sums were worked or pictures were done, he would fold arms over the slate upon his bosom and sit with bowed head for an hour unless called to action. This was so absurd to the restless boys around that they hit
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upon the fatally alliterative nickname of "Lazy Lysses," which he heard with silent contempt; for daily and yearly, he was doing more hard work than any two of them ; and in that mus- ing brain was growing the fiber of the most amazing energy. Yet, the boys all liked this warrior who never quarreled. When school was out they crowded to feed the bark mill, while he reclined upon the sweep behind the circling horse, a model of careless unconcern. He did not want to go to West Point, for he doubted his preparation, and only yielded to parental au- thority. But he wished to travel.
A course at college is the guiding hope of all aspiring youth, but the chivalrous romance of American boyhood is to have a place at West Point or Annapolis. None but those who have tested realize the fierce competition. Every class contains boys whose swaddling clothes were marked "M. A." or "N. A.," and who were bred for the Military or Naval Academy. Their education under experts is intended not only to get them in, but also for the much more difficult part of keeping them there. Many, previous to admission, have been taught through much of the course. In theory, all cadets have an equal chance ; but for a boy without special training there is much disadvantage.
The twelve thousand writers of All Gull have heightened their contrasts by recording that Grant was a mediocre at West Point. He had not an hour of special training. He had not seen an algebra in Georgetown, and he knew not a word of French. Yet these were the first branches in which he had to contend in the first year with one hundred and six class- mates. Of that number, one-third were collegians and two- thirds were of much broader study than his own. Like many before and since, he quickly saw that he could not stand high in his class. He wasted no time in useless repining. He asked no favors, but accepted every event with the complacency of a fatalist. He conned every lesson once through and let it go. In this way much time was found for permitted hours in the library, where a hoard of utmost value was gained that did not count on the merit roll. For that general course of read- . ing, he deliberately, knowingly sacrificed several possible num- bers in his class. At last it was seen that the little cadet with a big head and shy ways was doing his work without much ap- parent effort. If this be mediocrity, it is not the common
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kind. Still the exquisite nettings of his mental fibre were not discovered. He soon wrote home : "This is the most beautiful place I have seen. I mean to stay, if I can-if not, the world is wide."
In the summer of 1841, the regular mid-course cadet's fur- lough of ten weeks was joyfully spent at home, where his friends saw that he had grown six inches taller in two years, and that he was as straight as a cadet should be. In the year before, after gathering a property that had a cash value of about fifteen thousand dollars. Jesse Grant had moved to Bethel, where he did not try to hide his prosperity. For, as the chance came. he bought the house which Senator Morris left in order to'practice law in Cincinnati. after leaving the Senate. That house was not only the finest in Bethel but the best in all central Clermont. Such exaltation of the Grants was more envied than neglected. Witless of all but the pleasant life, the cadet went back to routine and to his graduation, which could not be brilliant, but should be respectable.
One incident was to happen that would have made him a prince in the days of chivalry. The horse alone of animals is the companion of man in war, and the sympathy between the steed and his rider is not born of art. All the superiority gained over him by hard study or long training, vanished on the pa- rade ground in the charge of squadrons or the rush of batteries, where he charmed them all with grace and skill. There was no possibility suggested by the riding masters that was be- yond Cadet Grant's execution. He was the best rider in his class, most likely the best ever-at West Point, and probably had no superior in the armies he ordered or vanquished. There was a horse at West Point then called York, and shunned by all other men. At the graduating exercises the last act of the diffident Cadet Grant, before all the dignitaries, as if to seal the mutual sympathy of steed and rider, was to make a running leap with the famous horse over a bar that marked six feet and two inches above the level, which stands the unsurpassed record of West Point, and, so far as is certain, of the world.
When the "Class of '43" went to the chapel for their gradu- ating address it was known that only thirty-nine were left out of the hundred and six who started, and of these, Uncle Sam Grant, as he was called, was No. 21, with a reputation of hav-
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ing been indolent in class work and somewhat addicted to idle reveries. But no account was taken of the general reading ac- complished, which was not equalled by any of the class and which was of priceless value in the wide compass of his after- life, in which nothing that could have been learned from the school books was omitted. As seen under the fierce light that shone around the summit of his fame as a soldier, as a peace- maker, and as an author, Grant appeared successively as a man finely equipped for the duty. Beyond doubt much of this was due to the library at West Point and a sketchy reading habit there formed.
The appearance of Lieutenant U. S. Grant of the Fourth Infantry in the fine uniform of a regular officer wa's a sensa- tion too profound for the comfort of a portion of Bethel. The young man had worthily won his honors, and was wearing the uniform of their liberties, and was heir to the titles and glories of Washington and Jackson. A like incident had not been seen there before or since. Morris was absent, but the occa- sion was not neglected. Through his modesty and common sense Grant escaped hazing at West Point, as scarcely no other cadet. That mortification came at home. His shy way with strangers was construed into haughtiness. The committee "to take him down" procured some nankeen to match the sky blue of his trousers and the darker blue of his coat, and had the stuff shaped after the military fashion, and duly braided with strips of white muslin. The stalwart hostler of the tav- ern across the street from the Grant home was induced to wear the costume, that was embellished with a lofty stovepipe hat, and bare feet. The fact that he was five years older and fifty pounds heavier made the affair seem safer, as he tied a sheepskin on a horse bridled with ropes, and began the racket which called the Grants from the table to the door to find a yelling rabble lining the street, over which the fellow was making mock parade. The Lieutenant found temporary relief in calming his furious father. His life shows no finer instance of self-control than during this insult to the man and his uni- form. His own account says, "I spent the rest of my leave elsewhere." The full meaning of the line does not occur to one reader in a thousand. After that he so disliked personal display that he wore a private's overcoat all the way to Appo-
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mattox. . The incident forms the principal mention of his na- tive county in his "Memoirs."
But he does not tell all. Upon any return to the Bethel home, the miserable travesty went through such variations as foolish envy could invent, and never was there a more inno- cent object. On returning from the Mexican War with a pro- motion and two brevets for gallantry, he brought a Mexican boy, whom he was kindly teaching. Once, in a playful mood, the boy leaped up and stood behind the Captain, riding along, for the boy was also an expert rider. As soon after as pos- sible, the hostler mounted and rode the street with a dog swung at his back. Captain Grant grew still more reserved in a habit that no tumult could provoke, that no gaze could pass. For this, baffled curiosity sought revenge by calling him apa- thetic-a chip in a resistless current-a spiller of blood where he had more lives in the balance of trade. But beneath this mask was a man so kind and gentle, so honest and truthful, so modest and deferential, that he bound his friends with cables of steel. And with this, he was as sweet of thought and pure of speech as women think their lovers are.
In a life so minutely scanned by eager writers, no part has been more obscured than his visits home, and yet they had much significance. In 1852 he came to secure the help of Philip B. Swing, afterwards United States Judge, in an effort to be a teacher in the Hillsboro Seminary, for which he was anxious to resign. Lawyer Swing rated him roundly for such folly and declined to help. After that no visit is of mention, un- til June 10 to 15, 1861, when he contemplated a partnership in a bakery at Camp Denison. On June 16, 1861, he was ap- pointed Colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Infantry. Although he had served with distinction, that service had been so distant and his life so modestly reserved and unpretentious, that a per- sonal search through every accessible file of the newspapers of Brown and Clermont failed to find a mention of his name be- fore that. After that, for twenty years, the story of his life is largely a history of America for the time.
That obscurity was not lost time for him. For all that is sublimest comes out of solitude. Grant's seclusion at that time is not so wonderful as it was necessary for his evolution. Whether in the crumbly furrow, the lonely road or the crowded
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street, he gained the teaching of visions. For the plain man who eschewed poetry lived in a realm of shadows, where he saw the gathering of squadrons and dusty trains of massing columns or watched the creeping lines of deploying divisions, or traced the ebb and flow of battle, as if it were all one vast field of observation. He knew the nomenclature of war and the technic of maneuvers, as Morphy knew the cabalistic symbols of chess without board or men. He could make people feel that they saw the battles which he described. He had the heritage of energy from a tireless father, and benevolence from an angelic mother. He had no politics but patriot- ism, no idol but duty. All others were trammeled by a record or dazzled by a future. Above and beond all, he had the imagination of battle, that flew to decisions for which oth- ers groped. After three years of mighty war had lifted him to the command of all, he had no false fancies about the superior bravery of sections., His wonderful vision of war compre- hended the prodigious forces engaged in a single purpose that must go on to the end without ceasing. In the first week of May, 1864, twenty-four army corps moved their lines forward. Sherman climbed the mountains and started for the sea. Mead forded the Rappahannock and began an all summer battle. There is no need to tell how or what they did. The result is known. Although he must have felt that every step was to- ward the pinnacles of lasting fame, Our Hero from Clermont and Brown never rode for show-never ordered troops or trains aside for the passage of his escort, but went here, there and everywhere, dressed according to the weather, in a fa- tigue blouse or common overcoat of a private, often alone, sel- dom with more than one orderly, and courting silence rather than applause. The lesson from the Bethel hostler made one full dress uniform last through most of the war. Yet he was not careless of his rank, which was protected with dignity and composure. The patient courtesy was only less remarkable than the face that concealed every emotion he did not choose to reveal. But the gentle pleading eyes that lived in the cold set features told that he dreaded war. When the stately Lee, in fine full dress, was asking for terms, the victor, in common clothes, soiled by a long, muddy ride to the scene, glanced at his opponent's cherished sword, a splendid trophy, and wrote,
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"Your men will keep their side arms"; and then, with another dash he said, "Your men will need their horses to put in a crop, they can keep them." The world has known no greater victory, and time has seen no finer terms of peace.
He had vanquished the Confederates with arms and then captured their honor with kindness. When no longer so much needed in the lofty rank of General of the United States, which was instituted as a special testimonial of national love and re- spect, he was elected President because the people would have no other before him. As President his policy was tersely stated in one of those laconic phrases for which he was noted : "Let us have peace." The eight years' service in the White House was followed by a trip around the world, which be- came the triumph of the nations.
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