The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1864-04-08
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT.
HIS BRILLIANT MILITARY
CAREER,
A Sketch Of his Life and Services
by a Personal Friend.

From the National Intelligencer, March 81.
General Grant was bern at Point
Pleasant, Clermont county, Ohio, on the
9th day of April, 1922, and is conse-
quently only in his forty-second year.
His father, Jesse r. Grant, tanner by
trade, is a native of Pennsylvania, and
was born in Westmoreland county in 1893,
and is now living at Oovington, Kentucky.
The Grant family is of Scotch extraction.
In the early part of the sixteenth century
two brothers emigrated from Scotland to
the colonies. One settled in Connecticut
and the other in New Jersey. From the
one who located in the former colony have
sprung the Grants of the North, and from
the one in the latter the Grants Of the
South. The mother of General Grant was
Hannah Simpson. In 1918 she removed,
with her father, John Simpson, from Mont
gomery county, Pennsylvania, where she
sas born, to Clermont county, Ohio, and
was welded in June, 1921, to her present
husband. Ulysses is the first child born
of that marriage, and the "S." in his
name stands for Simpson, the name Of his
mothers family. jesse R. Grant emf
grated, with his fathers family, to the
Northwestern territory in 1899, and set
tied in what is now Columbia county,
Ohio. In 1904 the family removed to
Deerfield, in what is now Portage county.
Jesse subsequently went to Ravenna, anc
for few years carried on tannery
there. In 1920 he located in Southwest
ern Ohio, where his illustrious son was
born.
General Grant is Scotch in many of his
qualities. In his boyhOod he always ex-
hibited business turn, and was never
without some particular purpose in hand
requiring responsibility, perseverance and
zeal-serious enough for one mature in
years. An incident in point will illustrate
this. At the age Of twelve he aspired to
the management Of his fathers draught
team, and was intrusted with it for the
purpose of hauling some heavy hewed
logs, which were to be loaded with the
aid of levers and the usual appliances by
several stout men. He came with his
team and found the logs, but no men. A
boy of more imaginative genius, and Of
equal but differently directed continuance,
might have laid down to listen or dream,
or build houses of chips. Not 20 with this
boy, who, unlike others, acted upon the
idea that where there was will there was
a way, and hesitated not at the undertak-
ing. Observing fallen tree, having a
gradual upward slope, he unhitched his
horses, attached them to log, drew it
horizontally to the tree, and then drew
one end of it up the inclined trunk, higher
than the wagon track, and 80 as to pro-
ject few feet over, and thus continued to
operate until he had brought several to
this position. Next he backed the wagon
under the projecting ends, and finally,
one by one, hitched to and drew the logs
lengthwise across the fallen trunk on to
his wagon, hitched up again and returned
with his load to his astOnished father.
In early life young Grant showed fac
ulty for business, was fond of school and
learned rapidly. His opportunities for &C
quiring knowledge we're, however, limited.
His fathers circumstances being moderate
at the time, and as Ulysses was useful to
MIN, he had but little more than three
winter months to attend school, and those
only the common ones kept in the village
where he lived. When he was seventeen
he manifested strong desire to receive
an education. His father suggested West
Point, which meeting the approval of his
son, he at once wrote to the late Senator
Thomas Morris, of Ohio, to gain him adj
mission into that institution. Mr.. Morris
replied to Mr.. Grant that he had disposed
of bis right to recommend a cadet, but
that there was vacancy in the district
occasioned by the failure of young man
by the name of Baily to pass an examina-
ton, and advised him to write to the then
representative, Hon. Thomas L. Hosmer,
on the subject. Mr.. Grant did SO and was
successful in his application. On the 1st
of July, 1889, Grant entered the Academy
in class of about one hundred, and while
at West Point did not seem to be partic-
ularly attracted by speculative philosophy,
but was remarkably fond of the more solid
and concrete forms of demonstrative
mathematics and of all experimental ex.
ercises. He was the only one that had