- Joined
- Feb 23, 2013
- Location
- East Texas
Part I
The town of Galena as seen from the front yard of the Grant Memorial Home State Park; First Lady Park containing a statue of Julia Grant is in the foreground. The large building with a tower at right is the local High School, built when attendence at one accounted for something!
"In April, 1860, men stood on the levee watching the steamer 'Itasca' while she nosed her way up the tortuous 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 overcoat. 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 - he is moving here from St. Louis,' was the reply.
Capt. 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 Simpson Grant had become a resident of Galena."
So wrote the poet Hamlin Garland in his Life of Grant about the Grant family's arrival in a town that still likes to point up the association, relatively brief though it proved over succeeding years. Whether any of it is true or an invention, the fact remains that Grant was only a citizen for a year prior to the outbreak of war, earning $600 per annum in a leather goods store owned by his father ( who continued to reside in St. Louis ) and run by his brothers. Grant worked as both a clerk and travelling sales representitave during that year, after which he would've become a full partner had war not intervened.
The Galena to which he arrived was an anomaly: a bustling Mississippi River port not actually ON the Mississippi! It had begun as an important lead-mining community ( galena is the ore which containes lead ) spread out along both banks of the Galena River, once a tributary of the Mississippi, but now merely a silted-up lake. Like another of my favorite Victorian towns, Jefferson, Texas, its main transportation outlet changed, leaving the community to wither, thereby preserving its Nineteenth Century archetecture from subsequent "development". Today Galena is a wonderful place in northern Illinois to visit and enjoy its slow-paced charm, good restaraunts, and many bed-and-breakfast accomodations.
The above ca. 1836 Dowling Trading Post and House is said to be the oldest in Galena and is a downtown museum set between later Nineteenth-Century brick buildings. Like most other frontier communities, Galena was swept by fire and eventually rebuilt mostly in brick. Not all have fared well; the one standing vacant below looks good from the outside but has many problems hindering its restoration.
These two stately homes have fared better and are now two of the many bed-and-breakfast operations in town: Above is the Captain Harris Guest House, built ca. 1836 by the captain of a riverboat, but subsequently much renovated and added-onto, where I stayed; below, the nearby 1840's Steamboat House, built in the style appropriately known as "Steamboat Gothic."
Next time in Part II, U. S. Grant in Galena.
The town of Galena as seen from the front yard of the Grant Memorial Home State Park; First Lady Park containing a statue of Julia Grant is in the foreground. The large building with a tower at right is the local High School, built when attendence at one accounted for something!
"In April, 1860, men stood on the levee watching the steamer 'Itasca' while she nosed her way up the tortuous 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 overcoat. 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 - he is moving here from St. Louis,' was the reply.
Capt. 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 Simpson Grant had become a resident of Galena."
So wrote the poet Hamlin Garland in his Life of Grant about the Grant family's arrival in a town that still likes to point up the association, relatively brief though it proved over succeeding years. Whether any of it is true or an invention, the fact remains that Grant was only a citizen for a year prior to the outbreak of war, earning $600 per annum in a leather goods store owned by his father ( who continued to reside in St. Louis ) and run by his brothers. Grant worked as both a clerk and travelling sales representitave during that year, after which he would've become a full partner had war not intervened.
The Galena to which he arrived was an anomaly: a bustling Mississippi River port not actually ON the Mississippi! It had begun as an important lead-mining community ( galena is the ore which containes lead ) spread out along both banks of the Galena River, once a tributary of the Mississippi, but now merely a silted-up lake. Like another of my favorite Victorian towns, Jefferson, Texas, its main transportation outlet changed, leaving the community to wither, thereby preserving its Nineteenth Century archetecture from subsequent "development". Today Galena is a wonderful place in northern Illinois to visit and enjoy its slow-paced charm, good restaraunts, and many bed-and-breakfast accomodations.
The above ca. 1836 Dowling Trading Post and House is said to be the oldest in Galena and is a downtown museum set between later Nineteenth-Century brick buildings. Like most other frontier communities, Galena was swept by fire and eventually rebuilt mostly in brick. Not all have fared well; the one standing vacant below looks good from the outside but has many problems hindering its restoration.
These two stately homes have fared better and are now two of the many bed-and-breakfast operations in town: Above is the Captain Harris Guest House, built ca. 1836 by the captain of a riverboat, but subsequently much renovated and added-onto, where I stayed; below, the nearby 1840's Steamboat House, built in the style appropriately known as "Steamboat Gothic."
Next time in Part II, U. S. Grant in Galena.
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