2018 Ulysses S. Grant Association Meetings: Growing up Grant

ready guy I'm just laughing about this we have one replacement we have Eleanor price leach dr. Eleanor Christ Lee who is who's the who's a great great-great grandchild of the season Julia and the rest of us are great great grandchildren of Ulysses and Julia from two different lines so the the two buck people raise your hands we have Miriam known as ma'am and Julia and and then we then Eleanor and then we have Nancy Griffiths price Claire and John and we are all friends oh and I'm Ulysses so we have in fact the only Julia and the only Ulysses in our generation it's a big generation we're the where the post where the baby boomers of the grand family there are two generations below us now [Music] and anyway I agreed to moderate the panel which was just going to be sort of chitchat and as some of you bunch of you know me from the years but so I am recently retired as the chief curator at the Newark Museum so public speaking is something I've done a lot over the years I calculated I wrote something that I've done over 1500 public lectures in the course of my career so I'm used to being up here without notes but I am not used to being up anywhere without pictures and I started talking and Rebecca said oh we're totally high tech we can do anything you want and then Claire said oh I have pictures and then mem said all I have pictures that I've seen her pictures and I said so we thought we would sort of get the conversation rolling by showing pictures and trying to explain who we are and who's not here so I stole this title from a movie that I like to the set in Hawaii and the subtitle is if I ever get to it will be the title of my memoir which is John Marshall X idea who said I should call it growing up grant because I am Ulysses Grant Dietz but I was called grant growing up because in the 1950s not only did you not name your child Ulysses Ulysses Grant was at the bottom of his popularity in the history of the world and my grandfather knew I would be tortured in the fifties and sixties I didn't adopt my using my first name until I was 15 in 1970 when it was cool to have a weird are we who are these descendants now I was joking at lunch that we all gather in the gothic Chapel in the Rocky Mountains every year and we wear our hoods we worship an image of you could be dumb the only time we have gotten together as a whole family is through organizations like this Terry Miller in Galena good in Lewis and John Maher selec and John the sort of the legacy of John Simon which Frank where's Frank which Frank my cousin Claire and I referred to him as our son for years as he resurrected the grant my name of association that went under when the tomb was given to the Park Service and was resurrected by train to be an ongoing watchdog and I still go to the tomb every year except I didn't go this year to give a little speech on his birthday in April so but these are the places that have brought the family together and one of the reasons starkville is the new sort of emotional epicenter of grantees would you call the less I don't want to take up too much of this because I can totally dominate so here they are this is like the marriage that defined the 19th century and this is thus fallen to my whole history as a curator because Julia and Ulysses are born in their 1820s on the frontier they gradually rise in power accident' as you all know the story until the war hits they represent the whole movement of America the industrial and economic and social changes in the 19th century and they end up living in Manhattan at the epicenter of Gilded Age America where everybody with money goes at least once or twice to establish a beachhead and here they are late in life not my favorite images of either of them but this is who they became they became the archetype of Gilded Age Americans dancing the same dances the rich and powerful concentrated in the East but coming from everywhere in the country and here are the kids so Fred who's my great grandfather and most of us are Fred's but the ulisses jr who shares with me a birthday and a high school he and I are born on the same day and I went to the same boarding school Nellie the apple of her father's eye although they were he adored all of his children he was a totally permissive parent by the way Nellie and then Jessie who was the baby and was pampered as babies are the bird if you've ever read books on birth order and the totally works for this family and and sort of one of the things I wanted to and one of the things we may talk about as we grow up and I know I've talked about this with men looking through her family albums in San Diego is that each of each of those children grows up in the shadow of their father but the shadow is cast at a different angle and so the descendants echo that all the way through the generations and it's really interesting to see that happen I won't go into that in detail you can ask us all sorts of questions about later so here's me and this is just me because this is my bit and I'm covering some sort of broad territory you're not getting all of it thank God we have four or five now this is actually a cropped picture from mince album this is Fred and Ida just before they went off to Austria in 1889 farm in upstate New York which men will tell you more about I love this image of them because I never think I think of them as really young or old and here they are sort of in their 30s at a pivotal moment in the career in there visiting buck and buck and Fred were very close as siblings and stayed close their whole life and from them Fred and I this children are you this season Julia the oldest grandchildren of Ulysses and Julia so there was a certain amount of filial piety in the naming here so ulysses s grant the third showing his West Point uniform and Julia grant who as you can tell from her mother see I've actually written about the jewelry she's wearing because that's what I do because that still exists not in the family tragically but this is in 1901 when she is princess catechu Zane Countess Speransky and it's one of the famous three emetic on top in in Russian noble society there are three American princesses she is the most notorious because she's quite outspoken and here and then my grandpa our grandfather Ulysses third in mufti when he meets at the White House working for Teddy Roosevelt right after his West Point appointment and I'm sure a great grandfather Fred wheedle zand we Dalls until Teddy caves in and gives young Ulysses a job right out of West Point and he meets the daughter of the Secretary of State Lau rube edith group who we all remember is our grandmother and these are pictures take around the time of their marriage in 1907 in Washington DC and then just I'm not going to go into Julia's family but this is Julia at the time in 1899 in Newport Rhode Island where she's taken under the wing of her aunt Bertha and is married off to this Russian Prince quite under her own steam and I've been doing research on that because she writes by the way dear instance she writes folks at memoirs 1919 1920 1921 about her life and her life in Russia and it's a very interesting thing to read and Michael well you'll see another picture of Michael grandparents wedding picture which actually hangs by my bedside at home not too you can all go it's a beautiful picture and and and our grandmother was 29 when they married she was sort of trapped she was the oldest child but she was a girl so she couldn't go to college she couldn't do what she wanted to do this is part of my theorizing but she was 29 and that's really late to get married in 1907 and she meets this dashing handsome articulate young man with a great name but no money you know the grant and she says okay this is a good one and correspondence about their courtship because they were beautiful couple and they were very happily married couple for 50 some years and I'd love to know the backstory I may make up something about me because that's what you do when you don't know have sister Marian well that could be taken any money to waste so this is a picture that I found in a family album and Claire may have the center but this is grandfather and grandmother with with Edith Dede MTV their mother raise your hands and then owners grandmother and then Clara Frances was always known as Patsy because my mother couldn't pronounce Clara Frances and called her Tara hansi and they are probably in Washington in 1912 which is when Nancy is born and there's my mother in 1916 with her mother and I've always wondered I love this photograph because it's also it's very intimate but it's very defiant and I talked to my mother with the birth of my mother in 1916 the telegrams come pouring in oh it's another girl you must be crushed and I asked my mother about that she said we never ever felt that we weren't the most beloved children on earth and this is my grandmother defying everybody saying this is my baby girl Julia who by the way was described as destructive by her mother later grandmother looks like mother she looks like my mother in that picture and here are the three girls this is a grandfather's 80th birthday in the house in upstate New York that they inherited from Ella new roof that we all know as children going even this was about an hour from where I grew up but this is so fancy Clara Frances Julie and DD or Edith with Edith and Ulysses late in their lives probably looking through one of their albums from the 1920s he was military he was a career army corps of engineers he built the Parkway to Mount Vernon he built the Alexandria Memorial Bridge he engineered it he built the third floor on the White House for the Coolidge's so his whole career was very much involved with Washington but I never knew him that way I had the baby of a generation and so I didn't really know him except in upstate New York in this house and just because I'm in charge my grandfather on his 85th birthday in 1966 and I hated that cake because it had whipped cream frosting and I was so crushed it's like Hajduk whipped cream so I was smiling putting on a good front and just because I'm in charge we found this in an album of Claire and I think this is this is princess Canada Zane Prince Kenneth cos ain't my grandmother my grandfather Fred and Ida at the army/navy game they're really humbled up but I love Clara has a whole album that's devoted to Julia Kanaka Zayn and it's these photographs exist nowhere else as far as I know and nobody would care about them except us so there's two lines who are not here and I wanted to talk about them because where we met them and we know them somewhat this is Julia and her redoubtable father the colonel dent with Jessie and Nelly post sometime early in the presidency or after the Civil War this feels like a post-civil war photograph to me yeah I mean her hairdo is that sort of girlish 1860s that really few women can pull off ever now Jesse's elder Jesse's child eldest son is Chapman and he was a famous herpetologist and we can find nothing not one photograph there must be something in the family but we don't know but Claire went to Escondido California and with him and Matt ulysses s grant v and his wife Jean so these are virtually the only pictures we have in our family of this side and California is interesting because there's a Southern California there's a whole US Grant thing going on down there but mem can talk more about that and I love that picture because I see something of the grants in you five we all have these abbreviations so it's u 1 u 2 u 3 u D because one does and then there's some Chapman who was our generation a great-great grandchild who died younger Mickey diamond in his fifties or sixties these folks who were still out there u.s. grant the six who actually looks rather like the general and his sister Alicia and then us six you six his daughter Taylor Madison grant who I once dreamed of marrying off to my son Alex Alexander Ulysses but that's not gonna happen so then so and they that family mostly now lives around Springfield Missouri as far as we know and u5 was my mother's generation and he died three or four years ago you taking notes [Laughter] [Music] so and then in 1874 in the White House at the beginning of grants second term Julia gotta finally got a pile of money from Congress to redo and I I've done a whole book on the White House and I won't bore you with the decoration of the interiors but she redid the East Room in order to marry off Nellie to this aristocratic Nellie whose name was Ellen but this aristocratic Englishman named Algernon starters and Algernon cried at his own wedding and US Grant cried at the wedding I did like Algernon at all and was losing his baby to England and it's a complicated story and it didn't go well but there they are Henry James writes about nellie's arturis after she and Algernon she and Algernon separated but the sardars family keeps her because they don't like him either there's the great quote from Henry James which I should have brought with me but the starter is descended so my generation our generation from Nelly is on Tuan Sarris and his sister Claude who was a Baroness and none of us remember her last name well they're French so all of the descendants well you'll get to that in a minute but so but on Tuan we know quite well and his wife Josie and there they are and this was at the meeting in Galena 99 st. Louis sorry st. Louis in the 1990s and here is the whole clan gathered in transfer did you go to this Claire set why you took the picture you know but so this is their sons a BA and his wife and then who we entertained at the Jersey Shore just before they got married so this is at their wedding this is the whole [Music] [Music] [Music] and this is one so this is their oldest son Arthur and their middle son do these Ulysses so this is the youngest Ulysses and he owned the baby of the family and notice he's wearing glasses so he has strabismus just as Julia did so there is a family and he was you know you can cure it but eyeglasses now but I said you know this is a family legacy so this is a good question does as are they are still have a comic book okay he runs along he he used to run a small chain of comic book stores called the Vizag movies out around ruang up and sort of lower Normandy and but he now his business is he manufactures action figures in China and he was in New York for comic-con which is when he came to visit us so so he's a very interesting man I'm very fond of 78 but and so that's that that's just to give you the big picture so there are two of the lines here there are two other lines house we're gonna work on and we're gonna get some of them now okay you're on we're going to start at Marin rather farm at Salem Center New York it is a property that my great-grandfather what YouTube and they heard was the the family cabin and friends and it was a really center place and so my pictures are all centered around this wonderful place now I happened to have a relative give me a book of the pictures of Mara where the firm and I looked at it and it's the reason I think that we are also hopes of this generation this those pictures send their relationship and it came to my attention because there were some of us who belong to the beneficiaries of the u.s. grant jr. trust and for 25 years old of the trust lasted longer than that my cousins came and they offered stayed with me so for 25 years quarterly we met and we started to talk about what would be so close because we didn't grow up together and it finally became apparent that it was because our grandparents were closed and really really close and stayed in touch so it was a way of thinking but also a way of being with one another that is our heritage and so these are some pictures that show that closeness that is the house very very fun and I have heard about varying weather farm since I was little so it's always been a magical place for me and I love the name whether it makes me happy so lots of friends and family came to visit and this is YouTube Julia mrs. grant Chaffee and equality as some of us called Mary oh my grandmother and aunt Topsy whose name we think was pretty big Julia that's that's your plan and that's and Totti was who she was Fanning yes I'm pretty sure she was Ben so I got this picture I think it shows and this is the one that Ulysses took the picture of Fred and I know from and that's you too and my grandmother great-grandmother and this is of course in the front is Chafee area Julia and in the back this is grant do too and this is YouTube but they're all though these pictures are post as a relationship seem to show up to all my shots of her face on there's all the myth that no one ever photographed her face on and this is she's in her late 60's and here is Julia Fred's daughter friends Julia the Fred's Julia my grandmother Miriam and what any of the pictures that I have of them they're always together whenever Julia Fritz Julia visited my grandfather was right at her side and then you three and duty and check champion boy until the fifth one arrive sometime after that so that was Ulysses the fourth who did not have children and he came later yes how much younger okay so this is just you know Miriam Topsy Fanny Josephine champion - Julia called Dewey there was a tendency to call her and that evening I didn't know her that started from and just to show you some of the elevators of the children of the comin right is Miriam Jackie Julia and Topsy now here is a schoolhouse which we saw the grounds and yes it was a schoolhouse and there's an area of Chaffee Julia with their guns now years later I saw a picture of my us grant support of my uncle great-uncle and he was standing in front of a house of Connie Shelia and I thought is he out there because they lived in downtown San Diego and I came to learn that the the nanny started the famous tree dropped dragutin colony and so she liked a lot of the people that were associated with the grants once you were associated you stayed associated you didn't get and so my my mother was born in that schoolhouse and here's a picture of my grandmother Miriam Fanny Josephine and the little one is my mother family which i think is very sweet there are one of the things that I think it's a legacy from the grants as the tenderness with which they treated their children I could know that that comes from you one in Julia and here is you two with his little tiny daughter to talk see now the other thing that was apparent is that children and people were accepted for who they were I remember looking at these pictures as well as a child thinking a little boy turns out over that and she was obviously century and obviously was a little rough and tumble think that he's holding Dorothy all nice don't have and although he didn't have any voice to play with it didn't affect his man he used to walk about of the story I've heard he walked into the room and trip over something fake and fall flat on his face as he entered the group everybody say oh are you hurt what's a joke stage but it looks like they're having such fun in this adventure and they also went on family forums which was it's also a wonderful one I couldn't find the second picture brother city [Applause] [Music] or ghosts and here is their there are few descendants who aren't with us any longer who wrote notes about their childhood and growing up as a descendant and so I thought I just read it's just just a few paragraphs it won't be a whole lot but I thought I would read those and and if you if you're interested in this the first generation Jessie another book in the days of my father General Grant which is really quite an interesting look because he was an interesting character and I recommend anybody who's interested in the sentence really Jesse's book now one thing I'm trying to think what are there one of the things that are selling it in your and my life is a descendant that maybe I shared one of them is that I have a lot of relatives need Ulysses and Juliet and we have Julia here and Ulysses here we have Juliet's elgran I think the youngest Ulysses now is the French you this and the youngest join it because I got to get this in the youngest julia is my granddaughter it's at eight years old Lulu's in the Jersey Shore now this is my grandma and I I think that one of the things that was very hard for my grandfather and very hard for all of us that we share in common is that people when they found out they were descended from ulysses s grant it was really obvious with him you immediately got the fake news and you got very hurtful remarks oh he was the drunk he was the butcher he was the man who had the scandalous administration and Ulysses mentioned one time at the tomb nobody ever looked at you and said oh he was a president that advocated many that's passing there's a stretched and no one had ever said that he was the best thing to happen he did the best as president for the freed slaves after Abraham Lincoln the penny president nobody ever said that now said that it's on page but when I was I didn't know enough to really have a rejoinder when people said these things and also I was confrontational but there was a descendant who really didn't stand up and this is Julia grantees Ulysses mother she was sitting with her father and it was his the third and that is her grandmother grant who is Haida who's married to Fred now Katherine Graham the owner of the Washington Post wrote her autobiography called personal history and in it she has a recollection of going to school with Julia and she had a recollection of McKenith she said by the seventh and eighth grades I've admitted some other friends Julia grant and Madeline lack both daughters of army officers and Julia the granddaughter of President Grant when we studied the civil war in sixth grade the students brought in pictures of their relatives who fought in the war Rose brought one of her great grandfather who was a clergyman in the Confederate Army Julia came to the famous photograph of General Grant leaning against a tree guess why he's leaning up against that tree Rose cracked because he's too drunk to stand up Julia I think it's very very interesting that they apologized to the family of the girl who knocked the other one that's something else that I think is referred to as grand stuff and you've seen some of it you're in the library exhibit seen the post Meryl Streep yeah so the grant stuff this is is that like this to the library I think every single line all four lines there's rows can find China that's come down to people most of the memorabilia of ulysses s grant that was you know about his official life is president when he traveled around the world and during the war most of that went to the Smithsonian Institution because in order to pay back Blum Vanderbilt with alone that he wrote to shore up grant Ward he signed over all his important memorabilia to be negative came back and said I'm gonna put these in trust with Julia Democrats as the trustee and then she then she will promise to give them to so what came down was a lot of China but my mother wrote a little memoir that I have in which she talks about going to her grandmother's house and stuck there and she said our grandmother grant looked large in our lives she was a very positive lady considered a beauty and then a quiet way was quite done in the area she lived in the tall four-story house on Massachusetts Avenue not far from us her house was full of furniture china pictures and precious islands of family history many of which are now in our houses but she always out on their living room wall a picture which I now have of my father at age 4 that's the one who's up there for in in long golden curls he was dressed up in a purple velvet suit made from one of his mother's dresses and carried a hoop this picture always embarrassed my father terribly under that portrait grandmother had a glass case full of uniforms buttons epaulets metals etc ball from u.s. craft and her mantel and shelves were full of gifts and honors received in the families drafts we were expected to eat lunch with my hand mother every Sunday I remember the food was wonderful especially the tomato soup and bison soup bowls were great dollops of sour cream the dining on chairs had USG carved on them there was a cabinet Canton China monitoring of USG now that the chairs that had the u.s. genome I think we when we went to Washington that last time but before they were at George Washington University and we saw them there another thing that we all share in common is really the greatest gift that we get as descendants and that is participation in grant organizations and events now this is this is the christening of ss President Grant in 1916 March of 1967 and it took place here and past achill past at the will of Mississippi and that's my mother breaking a bottle of champagne is her older sister Edith and she had christened in 1963 she christened the submarine [Music] chips but mother remembered as a child and wrote in this little memoir father was in charge of public buildings and parks under President Coolidge and Hoover due to his job and our family name our life included many public and historical occasions in 1926 Edith and I raised the flags at the new Red Cross building in 1927 we're at the inauguration of telephone service to Mexico in 1927 also we three girls went on an overnight trip to Point Pleasant Ohio with grandmother I'm joy at Kenneth guzheng and our parents to dedicate the restored cabin where US Grant was born and to dedicate a memorial bridge nearby across Indian Creek we were settled in the hotel gibsonson Center in Cincinnati and driven from there to 20 pleasantly there are all stand on the platform with various dignitaries and some Civil War veterans including Lieutenant John Jones the sole surviving officer at the 21st Illinois regiment where a u.s. grant began his Civil War career as his colonel the old veterans were very jolly and threw candy hearts to US children suddenly the platform broke and Colitis fortunately no one was hurt but we were all pretty shaken there were several speeches one of which was my father's ribbons across the bridge hook cut and Julia unveiled a plaque of us crammed on the bridge we then were driven back to Cincinnati and terrible traffic and collapsed in the hotel when grandmother got to her room there seemed to be no better and she called the decks to tell them that her bed had been taken so he called the house detective it turned out that the room had a Murphy bed and that was a contraction well but you know I there was a picture there was a there was a picture that Julia there was a picture that Julia did in the pictures that she wanted to go in her memoir and it says on the back this is the the cabin where the wee babe was born the Sun shone over him through the two million and then she said however this is not the cabin that we visited [Music] [Music] [Music] now so as I said before I think really the probably really the best thing that happens to us and I remember as a teenager sitting at my mother's table and also at my grandfather's table and a lot dr. Steinman dr. Simon was revered in my family and the papers they they were so happy about the papers being published because they thought that they could put things to write about the reputation of their family and that is exactly what's happened so I also have to say that it's my association with these groups that's taught me about Graham because believe me I really didn't know much about children when he got sick and died there were only four of them and Julia was probably eight nine and our grandfather was four was born but those children didn't really know my grandfather wrote in his book it was that statesman he wrote that he ever met he had he and his mother and father lived in the house in New York with u1 and Julia Democrat and when he got sick he remembered that his grandma I was in bed and that he was in a wrapper all the time but that he could get up and go and stand at the window and watch troops marching now they they could see Fifth Avenue from that house so there must have been a parade or something so just a little four-year-old remember that and then he other than that he remembers they never told them what they killin this was or what was going on but they were told that they had to be very quiet and not run about and that they must not speak to any newspaper follow all of these grand children everywhere we have scrapbooks newspaper articles about this little boy like they must have been really followed by the constantly so anyway I just want to say thank you all of you for teaching us about it thank you for bringing all of us together so we're going to thank you for the really this library is overwhelming and thank you for everything you've done to restore you one's reputation [Applause] that's the whole motley crew and that includes all four lines the Jessie people are there the receptors and the star of this [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] of course the same thing happened with the log-house hardscrabble that it has been moved by the bush people to bush farm but it was in a totally different location the st. Louis County was one of the things another thing I was thinking he was a little girl a strong girl he was four at the time well and see pictures of the grant family on the steps of malcolm raggert 20 us brent the first was dying he's the one with some straw hat his grandmother newtonia denim brand at some point soon after that had somebody cut his hair so he did not have more mother was absolutely heart she was so was it her mother for having done it then our grandfather felt very proud to finally have a voice I think I play something about my Korean okay Julia did gran and she was a very quiet woman but she had definite ideas of her own we get all ready to go to dinner and as a family and she said I don't want to go now we're gonna go walk around and look at the roses in the garden she changed her mind a lot she was a she was the little girl with the long curls very beautiful and what I see in my line is the love of animals we have a love of animals in our our family and one time she was at a picnic in Yosemite and she just disappeared in her mother later said well where did you go oh I didn't tell you I went off for three hours riding with the Indians she got a horse and she just went off with the Indians and I didn't hear it I was really wondering what happened you know didn't hear any more about that story but my cousin who's not here today Julia she is called the horse whisperer in Oregon and she can brave and tame wild mustangs so it's very interesting and I went with her once I said where are we going and she said oh the guy said that I could come because I'm anyone that the horses will come to me and we went out was huge Valley and we had binoculars and there were about thirty wild mustangs and they literally two of them came over right up to us so there's a magic with the animals in our family and I don't know about the other relatives but I mean I want to get I know are but so elder is the representative for the three great has it been spoiled because there are all of these people who research your family for you and also connection so family medicine physician in my medical assistant a few years I found out that her great-great-great uncle was Mark Twain [Music] each of our minds has had success anything about their grandparents much less their great-grandparents and I'm far enough removed from it but you know I never met y'all's grandfather and so it does start to kind of or it could be fading towards legend but their family stories and that I'll mention that people who actually look let me tell me you about what really happened with your ancestor that might be what you say in your family but here's the facts in the story about the punching incident always gave me strength from elementary school then when I married somebody from here in Starkville and our first date the first thing I had to make sure it wasn't a Confederate 20 years so we knew it was meant to be I [Music] wanted to perfect I didn't get to say this but I'm so honored to be here I know all of us are we're a little overwhelmed with the library that's just so amazing what you've done in your peers they had a vision and I'm sure they were very very hard to put this together in I'm a little emotional but to walk through that library and see my great-great-grandfather and just see he's honored today in the South no less it's quite moving it's quite moving because there's a lot of healing going on especially with current political things but I've got a funny little story and then I'm done um I was told this by my I think it was my mother and she said you know she said our great our great-great grandmother wasn't being at all I mean she she had these freak parties and stuff but as far as her appearance you know she she was just who she was a very down-to-earth woman except when she found out that Grant was nominated for president and could very well win she didn't tell him and she went into a hospital to get she was going to get her cross eyes to set so they'd see directly you know and she didn't tell him and somehow he found out about this and he went dashed over to the hospital before they gave her some money where Meneses anesthetic beckoned and he said no no I if she changes her eyes I won't know who I'm kissing and he said Apple back then those operations you know were very dangerous and he said no hire me please I married you this way I fell in love with you this way and you will be this way and that's that's an old family stories [Music] [Music] [Music] there's a YouTube video of someone from a church in talking to John at one of these events it's just the funniest thing because they treat him like he is museum piece fun is the whole story of why they didn't go to the Ford theater and the critical night in the version that I heard generations down was that it was like a supernatural premonition [Music] [Music] well I also think that of course this is done so beautifully in the library if you see the interactive reading press a button and then it asks questions about grant you know LS he a drunk was he and when I read round chair and else book it really portrayed that he hated the ward he missed his family terribly and so that that old adage about it he was a drunk and that he was course and all this stuff that's the first question I can ask as soon as somebody finds out I'm a descendant they go little what do you think about the drinking and Ron were traded so well he's the only biographer I think that did this that showed that Grant went to many temperance meetings he caught her drinking in his life and that was a big deal and he was a very kind and modest man and I wrote a couple of qualities that I think are pretty cool he was very thorough he had stick-to-itiveness he had very high ideals he was a very calm man in a crisis and very gentle so these other adjectives about him you know I've learned to be very calm because I can't if I got a dollar for every time somebody said oh boy he's the drinker I just but so if you read brought your house book he portrays him I think very very realistically and he brings out a lot of facts that are not known that's a strong trait we need to wrap it up and I will stay you may have gathered this that the family likes Ron chernow spoke a lot so if you have issues with it and I emailed John the day I finished the book John Ron and I said you are officially my best friend because that book you know it's clear said none of us John probably but none of us really knew any of this until you all forced us to read this book I remember the first time I went to Washington with John why Simon and so one of you came up to me and said so which u.s. grant books have you read this year I thought wow and the rest is history so we need to we need to end this now and I'm putting out a call for the other u.s. grant descendants in the crowd and I can see two of you need to come up here and two more of you to come up here and we're going to get workshop and if anybody's lurking in the back of that [Applause]

Channel: Mississippi State University Libraries

Views: 1,178

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Ulysses S. Grant, Ulysses S. Grant Association, Ulysses Grant Deitz, Grant Descendants, Claire Telecki, Mim Sellgren, Frances Griffiths, Julia Castleton

Id: EB-KOVdfoB4

Length: 61min 36sec (3696 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018