Julia Dent Grant Embraced Change
The Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site commemorates the former first lady’s bicentennial with a yearlong series of events and an exhibit that tells her story.
A carefree scene of windswept clouds against a bright blue sky above majestic, blooming locust trees is how Julia Dent Grant begins her historic memoirs. The former first lady and wife of President Ulysses S. Grant, the heroic Civil War Union Army general, vividly recalls her earliest memories with her mother, father and brothers in that bucolic setting on the front piazza of her childhood home, White Haven, in Missouri.
That roughly 10-acre plantation, now formally named the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site preserved outside of St. Louis, gives visitors a window into Julia Dent Grant’s formative years. At White Haven, she lived a privileged family life and recalls a “happy home,” which was maintained and supported by enslaved people.
Two-hundred years after her birth in 1826, the National Park Service, which oversees the historic site, is commemorating the former first lady and her bicentennial birth year with a series of events tha…
