GRANT, 18th, 1869-77

Hiram Ulysses Grant had unusually small hands and feet. His physical modesty was extreme. He said that no one had seen him naked since he was a small boy.

Grant said, "My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral." Through the Delano family, Grant was a fourth cousin once removed to Franklin Roosevelt and a sixth cousin once removed of Grover Cleveland.

Julia Dent Grant was by no means a beauty. As First Lady, she considered an operation to correct an eye defect, but the President "liked her," he said, "with her eyes crossed and would not have her different."

Lacking drive or decision in civilian life, he was a failure in everything he did. But in war he was a lion. He wrote in his memoir, "One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished...instead of turning back, I would go on until a road was found turning in the right direction, take that, and come in by the other side."

On May 5, 1884 panic swept Wall Street when brokers learned of the sixteen-million-dollar failure of the firm, Grant & Ward. Former President Grant had followed his son into the firm as a silent partner. In 1909, after ten years in the New York State Prison at Sing Sing, Ferdinand Ward told the New York Herald, "It was believed I might reveal something which would show General Grant's connection with the failure of our firm. I would not have done this if I could. I could not if I would. General Grant was always so much the child in business matters that it would have been impossible for him had he been so minded to hasten much by any overt act the fall of our house."

After the crash Grant's personal assets amounted to less than $200.

He was an acute alcoholic.

Penniless, in disgrace and dying of cancer of the throat, the old General began to write his "Personal Memoirs" with Mark Twain as his publisher. Grant finished the two-volume work on July 19, 1885; he died five days later. The "Personal Memoirs" quickly became a best seller, and the Grants, who received 75 percent of the royalties, made $450,000 from the book. He thus re-established their fortune and made the last years for his beloved goose of a wife comfortable and happy.

Grant wrote, "A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three."

d. July 23, 1885 (New York, New York) at 63 of carcinoma of the tongue and tonsils.