|
Julia Grant
With Cabinet wives as her allies, she entertained extensively and lavishly. The social highlight of the Grant years was the White House wedding of their daughter in 1874. Her peers noted her clothing, jewels, and silks and laces. After four years of war, an assassination, and an impeachment trial, Washington was ready for a little fun, and Julia obliged. She offered a full array of events and became a popular hostess. She planned lavish state dinners, where guests enjoyed expensive wines and liquors. Mrs. Grant played an unintentional role in the expanding popularity of Christmas as celebrated in Victorian Era America. During her First Christmas as First Lady, she permitted a Washington reporter to publish a full account of how she celebrated the holiday with her family and friends. She may have copied, consciously or unconsciously, the holiday customs of the British Royal Family, which were widely published in popular women’s magazines of the era to which the First Lady subscribed. Although already being produced and sold in Great Britain, the first known examples of Christmas cards being mass-marketed in the United States occurred in 1875. Julia Grant sent cards out to personal friends either that first year or in 1876, her last Christmas as First Lady. After they left the presidency they traveled around the world. In 1884 Grant suffered another business failure and they lost all they had. To provide for his wife, Grant wrote his famous Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant in 1885 while racing against time from cancer and death. Funds amassed from her husband's memoirs coupled with her widow's pension enabled her to live in comfort, surrounded by children and grandchildren, until her own death in 1902 at age 76. She became the first First Lady to write a memoir, though she was unable to find a publisher, and had been dead almost 75 years before The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant) was finally published in 1975. She is buried beside her husband at Grant's Tomb in New York City. |
Julia
Grant was born January 26, 1826 near St. Louis, Missouri. She attended
the Misses Mauros' boarding school in St. Louis for seven years among
the daughters of other affluent parents. She excelled in art and voice.
A social favorite in that circle, she met Ulysses at her home, where her
family welcomed him as a West Point classmate of her brother Frederick.
Grant proposed several times. When Julia finally accepted, they were
sitting on the front steps of her beloved childhood home, White Haven, a
picturesque plantation. In 1844 they embarked on a 4-year engagement,
delayed by the Mexican-American War, during which they saw each other
only once. In 1848 she married Ulysses S. Grant. He served in the army
until his resignation in 1854. After he became the 18th
President of the United States, she enjoyed entertaining in the White
House. As First Lady it was suggested to her that she have an operation
to correct her crossed eyes, but President Grant said that he liked her
that way. Most photographs and paintings show her posing sideways so she
did not draw attention to her crossed eyes.
