The Coolidge examiner., 1932-04-22
GrantMennoriaL Home
BY ELMO SCOTT WATSON

E: s. '" .. F.s .s WI. r..s. .. .. s'a hid.
life the baby is nameless. Father
and mother, it seems, cannot agree upon name
Then, in the words of w. E. Woodward in his
biography Meet General Grant" 1t was agreed
finally to let chance decide the question. The
assembled relatives-so the story runs-wrote
the names of their choice on slips of paper, folded
up the slips, and drew one. 1t was Ulysses, the
name that had been proposed by Grandmother
Simpson. Evidently the outcome was not wholly
satisfactory to the masculine part of the family
Somebody who was there succeeded in tacking
Hiram in front of Ulysses. so the child was
called Hiram Ulysses Grant"
Thus the first chapter in the story of a man
and a town.
The scene shifts now to the north and west
some $50 miles, On high point of land rising
abruptly from little river which empties into
the mighty Mississippi six miles away a settler
from Kentucky, named Thomas January, has es
tablshed trading post French Canadian voy-
ageur and American traders call the place Jan
uarys Point.
There is a good reason for establishing trad
ing post there Away back in 100 a French
man named lie Suer, ascending the Mississippi,
had discovered Indians working rude lead mines
near this river and in his official report he
called it the River of Mines. Later in the cen
tury a French trader named La Fevre estab-
lshed himself here and the name of Fevre
river tackled on to the stream American
frontiersmen later Angcized that name to the
Fever river and that name, with its unpleasant
suggestion of i'll health, persisted until 1896 when
Januarys Point became known as Galena and
the Fever river the Galena river because
galena is the name Of the valuable susphite of
lead which was mined there.
SO while Ulysses Grant is growing up into
lusty young manhood back in Ohio, the trading
post on the Fever river is growing into the lusty
little settlement of Galena in the new state of
Illinois. More trading posts are established be-
this is still the heart of the Indian coun-
try, and the red man has many things the white
man wants and vce-versa. But the thing, which
is bringing a rush of migration there and which
would have justified a proud chamber of COM
merce boast of watch Galena grow :" (if there
had been chambers OF commerce in those days)
is the lead mining industry.
Next to st. Louis, Galena was the most i'm
portant town in the West and Galenans began
suffering from delusons of grandeur. They
boastfully predicted that it would soon over
shadow the old French and Spanish metropolis
to the South. Had some told them that it
would soon be displaced in Importance by little
town named Chicago, which squatted down
among the marshes on the shores of Lake Mich
igan, they would have laughed long and loud
For everybody who went West in those days
visited Galena And Everybody" included ma
tiona and world notables-the Marquis de La
fayette the Prince de Joineville of the royal
House of Bourbon, Dolly Madison, wife of the
fourth President of the United States Martin
Van Buren, and Zachary Taylor, future Presidents.
Mrs Alexander Hamilton, Joseph Smith, Mormon
prophet. Charles Sumner, and Jefferson Davis
then a young lieutenant in the United States
army but later destined to lead the Lost Cause
of the Confederacy. BY 1860 Galena had
reached the apex of its fame and its claim to
distinction.
At that time it had no way of knowing that in
less than half a century it would become town
that had died its feet, quiet little village
resembling nothing so much as an old man bask-
ing in the sunshine and dreaming of the days
of his youth. 1t could not have known that it
would come to be famous principally through the
linking of its name with the name of a man
who had not yet walked through its narrow,
winding streets 1t probably had never heard
of the town of Point Pleasant, Ohio and GER
tainly the birth of a son to Jesse and Hannah
Grant there on April 81, 1922, meant nothing to
Galena
Except for the adding of another business en-
terprise to its list it meant nothing more to
Galena when the elder Grant then owner of
a tannery in Covington, KY, sent his two sons,
Jesse Root and Samuel Simpson, to open a
leather store in the Illinois town. SO Gaena
could not realize the Importance to it of event
which took place in April 1860. Hamn Garland
in his Life of Grant describes it as follows
MEN stood on the levee watching the steamer
Ttasca' while she nOsed her way up the tor
tuous current of the Galena river; as she swung
up to the wharf, attention was attracted to a
passenger on the deck wearing blue cape over
coat 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
Grants oldest son he was in the Mexican war