Hiram Ulysses Grant  "The Early Years"  April 27, 1822- July 23, 1885

On April 27, 1822, the first child of Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant was born in their modest homestead in Point Pleasant, Ohio, a small town on the Ohio River. The Grants named their baby son Hiram Ulysses and moved soon afterward a short distance to the town of Georgetown, Ohio, where Hiram Ulysses lived for the first 16 years of his life.

Jesse ably supported his family as a tanner, and Hiram Ulysses, who was simply called Ulysses, grew up free of financial hardship. His mother was a calm, quiet woman of great simplicity. Ulysses himself was throughout his life a quiet man, calm during crises, with a manner of unbuttoned informality. His father, Jesse, whose own father had been unable to support his children, had been apprenticed to a tradesman at the age of 11. This hard childhood seemed to have made Jesse mean-spirited as well as ambitious. Jesse was never pleased with Ulysses and was disappointed that his eldest son showed, in his eyes, little potential. Ulysses was of small stature, detested working in the tannery, and had no head for business. To escape his father's scornful attitude and the tannery business, he worked on farmland owned by his father. There he developed skill in handling horses.

Ulysses spent his 16th year at a boarding school in Maysville, KY. By the time he returned home, his father had decided to send him to school at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY., and had secured an appointment there with the help of a political acquaintance. Ulysses had no interest whatsoever in a military life and had a great fear of flunking out. When he arrived at West Point, he was 17 years old, stood 5'1", and weighed 120 pounds. His name was changed forever when he enrolled. He tried to reverse his names and enroll as Ulysses Hiram Grant, but the appointment had already been made erroneously in the name of Ulysses S. Grant because the congressman who had appointed him thought his middle name was his mother's maiden name. Unable to correct the error, Grant took the new name as his own.

Fascinating Fact:  Because of his initials, Ulysses won the nickname "Uncle Sam", but was mostly called just plain Sam Grant


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