Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site

Ulysses S. Grant is best known as the victorious Union general of the U.S. Civil War and as the 18th president of the United States. But before Grant became president, before he became a general, he was a farmer eking out a living on his wife’s family farm near St. Louis, Mo. Learn more about that part of Grant’s life at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site.

Grant’s future wife, Julia Dent, grew up at White Haven, which was then at the outskirts of St. Louis. When Colonel Thomas Dent bought the plantation in 1820, he renamed the farm after a Dent property in Maryland, even though the farm house was never painted white in the 19th century.

Visitors will find a main house and several outbuildings on the remaining 9.7 acres, giving a good idea of agricultural life in the mid-19th century. A “Magic Mirror” shows a recreation of some aspect of life at White Haven during its heyday; the filmed episode changes periodically. A barn raised by Grant himself now houses a museum; it holds the exhibit An Intricate Tapestry: The Lives of Ulysses and Julia Grant, which traces the Grants’ lives and their influence on 19th century America. 

Julia Dent Grant continued to live at the farm even after her marriage as Grant was moved from one posting to another. A mere lieutenant, he could not afford to take a wife with him to the American frontier. Three of the four Grant children were born on the Dent estate — although not all at White Haven. Grant was promoted to captain and abruptly resigned his army commission soon after in 1854 to return to his family. Grant returned to White Haven and labored on the farm until 1858.

The National Park Service lists the Grant family’s visits to White Haven between 1861 and 1903 here.

Beginning at 9:30 a.m., free interpretive visits to the Main House are usually offered every 30 minutes. (Tickets, while free, are required.) The last house visit begins at 4:30 p.m.

A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Grant went home with a former classmate, Frederick Dent, and met Dent’s younger sister, Julia Boggs Dent, in February 1844. They became secretly engaged in May, but did not reveal their engagement for nearly a year. Julia waited for Grant through his deployment to Louisiana and service in the Mexican-American War, seeing her beloved just once in a four-year period. Grant married Dent on Aug. 22, 1848. Missouri was a slave state, and Colonel Dent owned slaves. Ironically, the man who would do so much to end slavery during the Civil War and who was the son of a Republican emancipationist married the daughter of a slaveholder who owned more than a dozen slaves.

Facing bankruptcy, Grant sold White Haven in 1885. Both Grants are buried in New York City where they lived after leaving the White House.

- by Ivonne Rovira, Saint Louis Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Ivonne Rovira

A graduate of the prestigious Columbia University School of Journalism in New York City, Ivonne Rovira worked as a reporter for the Miami News, The Miami Herald and The Associated Press. She has written articles for The National Catholic Reporter and The Courier-Journal. For more than 15 years, Ivonne wrote and edited articles aimed at middle-school children.