Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. III.djvu/43

 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT, eighteenth president of the United States, born at Point Pleasant, Cler- mont County, Ohio, April 27, 1822; died on Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, N. Y., July 23, 1885. He was of Scottish ancestry, but his family had been American in all its branches for eight genera tions. He was a descendant of Matthew Grant, who arrived at Dorchester, Mass., in May, 1630. His father was Jesse R. Grant, and his mother Hannah Simpson. They were married in June, 1821, in Clermont county, Ohio. Ulysses, the old est of six children, spent his boyhood in assisting his father on the farm, a work more congenial to his tastes than working in the tannery of which his father was proprietor. He attended the vil lage school, and in the spring of 1839 was ap pointed to a cadetship in the U. S. military acad emy by Thomas L. Hamer, M. C. The name given him at birth was Hiram Ulysses, but he was al ways called by his middle name. Mr. Hamer, thinking this his first name, and that his middle name was probably that of his mother s family, in serted in the official appointment the name of 23