The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1932-04-22
BY ELMO SCOTT WATSON

- In the home of Jesse Root Grant,
f(>~WYy=+50 foreman of a small tannery, his
IhNtW j wife, Hannah Simpson Grant. has
lSs&FI presented him with his first child,
IL TN ii a son.
lS-AA@ For the first six weeks of his
life the baby is nameless. Father
and mother, it seems, cannot agree upon a name.
Then, in the words of w. E. Woodward in his
biography Meet General Grant" 1T was agreed
finally 10 let chance decide the question. The
assembled relatives-sO the story runs-wrOte
the names of their choice slips Of paper folded
up the slips and drew one It was Ulysses the
aame that had been proposed by Grandmother
Simpson. Evidently the outcome was not wholly
satisfactory TO the masculine part of the family.
Somebody who there succeeded in lacking
Giram on in front of Ulysses so the child was
called Hiram Ulysses Grant. A virile name is
Hiram, devoid of sweetness, and carrying
gense Of muscular strength No doubt it was
hoped by the hard-handed tree-chOppers of the
family that Ulysses would fade into the OBJ
Jcurity of an anonymous middle initial. Futile
hope. Children are known by the name their
mother calls them, and Hannah called her
son Ulysses. or Iyss' for short"
Thus, the first chapter in the story of man
and a town
The scene shifts now to the north and west
come $50 miles. On a high point of land rising
abruptly from a little river which empties into
the mighty Mississippi six miles away a settler
from Kentucky named Thomas January, has
tablished a trading post. French-Canadan 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 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
fury a French trader named La Fevre estab-
lished himself here and the name Of Fevre
river was tackled or TO the stream American
frontiersmen later Anglicized that name to the
Fever river and that name, with its unpleasant
suggestion of i'll health, persisted until 1926 when
Januarys Point became known Galena and
the Fever river as the Galena river, because
galena is the name of the valuable sulphite 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-
cause this is still the heart of the Indian coun-
try and the red man has many things the white
man wants and vice-versa. But the thing, which
is bringing a rush of migration there and which
would have justified proud chamber of COM
merce boast of watch Galena grow!' Cf there
had been chambers of commerce in those days.,
is the lead mining industry.
The outbreak of the Black Hawk war in 1892
gave Galena additional prominence, for stock
ade was built around the little settlement and it
was converted into a military camp as place
of refuge for the settlers. With the passing Of
the Indian threat, the town hummed with addi-
tional business activity. By 1S45 it was the most
important commercial point the Mississippi
north of St Louis. 1t had population of $4,000.
All steamers which piled the great Middle
Western waterway came up the little river and
tied up ct the Galena levee to load and unload.
Next TO st. Louis, Galena was the most i'm
portant town in the West and Galenians began
suffering from decisions of grandeur. They
boastfully predicted that it would over
shadow the old French and Spanish metropolis
10 the South. Had some one 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
tional and world notables-the Marquis de La
fayette the Prince de BONNEVILLE 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. Two stream of culture
flowed into Galena from the South and from the
North-a strain Of the Southern slave-holdng
aristocracy which came from st. Louis up the
Mississippi and an English strain which seeped
down the Mississippi from Lord Selkirks colony
on the Red River of the North in Canada.
Galena became a social and cultural center In
the raw new country of Illinois. 1t saw Joseph
Jefferson's father and mother act in the hall Of
the courthouse and il heard Jenny Lind sing in
the big dining room of the De Soto house. It
assembled in mass meeting In 1865 to hear
Abraham Lincoln speak from the balcony of
that famous hosiery. By 1860 Galena had
reached the apex of its fame and its claim to
distinction.
AT that time il had way of knowing that in
less than half century ii would become town
that had died its feet, a quiet little village
resembling nothing so much as an old man bask-
ing In the sunshine and dreaming of the days
of his youth. II 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 vet walked through its narrow,
winding streets 1t probably had never heard
of the town of Point Pleasant, Ohio. and GER
tainly the birth of son TO Jesse and Hannah
Grant there on April q. 1922, meant nothing to
Galena.
Except for the adding Of another business en-
Terprise to its list, Ii meant nothing more to