18. Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was born April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, and was christened Hiram Ulysses Grant. He later became Ulysses S. when his name was misrecorded at West Point. He lived in his small birth cabin for only a year before the family moved twenty miles to Georgetown where Grant’s father operated a successful tannery. The birthplace was uprooted in the 1890s and traveled the country as a memorial exhibition before it landed at the state fairgrounds in Columbus. In 1936, the house was returned to its original foundation in Point Pleasant. Grant’s boyhood home in Georgetown is a National Historic Landmark. As a child, Grant helped around the tannery and homestead. He had a particular affinity for horses and was renowned as a teenager for his ability to train horses. Grant attended a local one-room schoolhouse and then attended two academies for a year each before enrolling at West Point.

-Andrew B. Leiter

This is the site that began the entire project. On my way to run an errand, I stumbled across the birthplace of Ulysses S. Grant right along the banks of the Ohio river. The markers took me by surprise, as did the modest home. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of being able to touch history-- to tangibly see the American dream in the very humble beginning of Grant's life. In the following day and weeks, I thought about the site and the footprints of the boy who would become Ulysses S. Grant. I thought about the influences that formed him and sent him on his grand trajectory. I returned to the site with these thoughts in my mind and camera in hand and the project was born. Little did I know that I would have three kids, celebrate 10 years of marriage, buy and sell a house of my own, and finally earn tenure before I was done photographing all the presidents' birthplaces! Researching each president as well as the political history of America has been a wonderful part of this project as has collaborating with my lifelong friend Andy Leiter. Although the Grant site was photographed early in the project, there are still two images that rank among my favorites:  the glowing light of the curtains silhouetting a chair from the birth home and the incredible texture of the hearth from the boyhood home. Both speak to my sensibilities as a photographer as well as to the preciousness of time and its passing.

-Matthew Albritton     

Matthew Albritton