A Visit To General Grant's Early Years

Ulysses S. Grant, known for being a successful general during the Civil War and later for being the 18th president of the United States, was born with the name Hiram Ulysses Grant in Point Pleasant, Ohio.  During the year after his birth, his family moved to Georgetown, Ohio.  Today, I visited his birthplace and his boyhood home in the two respective locales.

Grant was born in a timber frame house which today is located along Ohio Route 232, about 170 feet from where it ends at an intersection with U.S. Route 52.  It's the closest of the three buildings seen in this first picture.  One window has a sign reading "closed".  The building behind the brown sign is also part of the site.  The other building to the right is a neighboring house.

The second building is part brick and part wood.

Between these two buildings is a well, currently adorned with American flags.

Behind the house where Grant was born is this marker for his ancestor Jean de Lannoy.  From what I can gather, Lannoy was also an ancestor of Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge.  Could the name "Delano" be a variant of "de Lannoy"?

Just east of the intersection with Ohio 232, U.S. 52 includes a bridge over Big Indian Creek.  The west end of the bridge, seen in the next picture, includes a cannon and something that looks like a lantern on each side of the road.  Another set of such decorations is found on the east end of the bridge.

After visiting Grant's birthplace in Point Pleasant, I drove over to his boyhood home in Georgetown.  In this picture, the house is seen from the west.

West of the house is a fairly large lawn, which includes a marker for General Thomas Lyon Hamer, who served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War.  A few years earlier, when he was congresscritter (D-OH), Hamer nominated Grant to attend West Point, but messed up his name.  Thus, Hiram Ulysses Grant became Ulysses S. Grant.  I don't know about the small building behind it.

Here's the east side of the house, which is located, as seen from the street sign, on North Water Street.

North of the house is this sundial and a picnic area.

A few blocks west of Grant's boyhood home, along Grant Avenue, is a statue of Grant himself.

For more information on Grant's boyhood home go to Ohio(dot)org.