Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1908-12-11

Gene-aI Grants Log Cabin.

IL "A
thousand acres of billy field and timber
land owned by Frederick Dent, that
General, then Lieutenant, Grant met
Miss Julia Dent, the eldest daughter of
the house, and won her heart. AS the
Dent family grew up, Mr.. Dent allotted
to each member In turn tract of land
from the original homestead and from
two to three slaves so, If they desired,
each one had his or her own home to
go to upon marriage, and house SER
wants to do the work. 1t is of one Of
these homes that Mrs Emma Dent
Casey-the last of the Dents of White
Haven-writes in the Associated Sun
day Magazine, in the hope that she
may be able to dispel the erroneous
idea that the far-famed log cabin of
General Grant was the mean. poor.
makeshift affair that the public mind
of to-day believes it to have been.
OF course many saw this cabin at the
Worlds Fair, writes Mrs. Casey, and
to my assertion many will say ''Bosh
We saw the cabin with our own eyes"
To them l will answer that. a house
unoccupied for many years is not a
home, nor Is it homelike; it is an empty
shell, a body without a soul, dead
thing and unlovely.
When Captain Grant resigned from
the army old Mr.. Grant, his father
gave him a thousand dollars. With
this he built and furnished a log house
of five rooms on eighty acres of land
(which my father had given Mrs. Grant
as bridal present.
The house was built after a plan con-
celved by Mrs. Grant, and was fash
toned and furnished with an eye to the
artistic, and to the end that it was
both homelike and refined.
Through the middle of the house ran
a hall, on either side of which were the
sitting-roOm and dining-room. Above
these were three bedrooms, two of good
size, and a small front room over a por-
ton of the hallway below. The kitchen
and servants quarters were in cabins
to the rear
Long before Sister Julia's marriage
to Captain Grant father gave her three
slaves, who remained. of course, at
White Haven while she was there.
Later, when Captain and Mrs. Grant
We're stationed at different army posts
in the free States, these slaves were
left behind, for obvious reasons. With
these three servants, two white horses.
a wagon, a COW, and the log house on
the eighty acres of land mentioned, the
Grants began civilian life in Missouri.
lido not doubt that there are several
elderly men yet living in st. Louis, or
on the Gravoise, as the neighborhood
where we lived was called that remem-
her the willing hands they lent to the
Grant ''house-raising party - for it Yves
my sisters wish that inasmuch as her
home was to be Of the old-fashioned
kind, it must and should be built in
the oldfashioned way-log laid upon
log by friendly hands. So after several
busy days for colOred Kitty and Mary
in the kitchen, and after a quantity of
trees had been felled, the logs duly
dragged to the proper site the neigh
bors from the Gravoise were invited in
to the raising" and sooner than one
would have expected, for all the feast
ing and merrymaking the house was
done. Later, carpenters from st. Louis
put on the finishing touches.
As l remember them, the window
sashes opened outward from the mid
die Each window contained two panes
of glass separated by a strip of wood
as broad as a mans hand. This gave
a pleasing and harmonious effect, and
was in perfect keeping with the Grant
log cabin.
Besides the Grants, there was yet
another home at White Haven. Father
gave my brother Louis two hundred
acres near the Grants and on this he
built after his marriage, a brick house
and called it "Wish-ton-wish," an In
dian name for the whippoorwill.
For all the two examples in home
naming, the Grants called their place
by no particular name. They simply
spoke of it as Home"