Oct 14, 2015 3 min read

Ulysses S. Grant, soldier, general and president, spent time in Southwestern Pennsylvania to get away from the pressure of Washington, D.C.

“But the question remains, why did he come here, specifically?” said Clayton Kilgore, executive director of Washington County Historical Society, speaking at the October meeting of Cornerstone Genealogical Society.

Grant’s wife, Julia Boggs Dent, had a cousin, William Wrenshaw Smith, the son of her mother’s sister, who lived in Washington, Pa. Julia was very close to this cousin. It is said they were raised more like siblings than cousins. It is this family they visited in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

When William W. Smith met Grant, they got along famously. Grant asked Smith to be his aide-de-camp during the war.

When the war was over, Smith returned to Washington and the family business. His father was a clothing merchant in Washington. The building in which the store was housed was called the Iron Hall; its facade is iron. The building is still standing today.

Smith had a revolutionary idea for the time, to hire women to work at the store, but his father wavered. Numerous letters were sent back and forth between the two concerning this issue. The son did hire women, and the store continued to do business.

Grant stayed at the Smith home many times. There are plaques displayed there with some of the dates: Sept. 15-21, 1869, and Sept. 18, 1871. Another plaque dated Sept. 8, 1869, was the setting of the cornerstone for the new town hall for Washington.

In a time capsule that was placed in the cornerstone of the new town hall in 1869 is a sample of “Mad” Anthony Wayne’s hair.

Smith wanted a school that would enable his sons to have a good education so he founded the Trinity Boys Military Academy. Today, it is the Trinity Area School District administration offices.

In 1869, two men, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, had a scheme to drive up the price of gold by buying large amounts of it.

In September 1869, when Gould and Fisk put their plan into action, the government was looking for Grant and couldn’t find him.

“Grant is in Greene County, with Smith, visiting friends,” Kilgore said. Grant knew he must respond quickly, but it took several days to get back to Washington from “Little” Washington. He sent a letter ahead to the government to sell the government’s gold.

The price of gold fell and numerous investors were ruined. “Black Friday: September 24, 1869” is the result.

Nov. 10 will be the 40th Cornerstone Genealogical Society’s anniversary banquet at the East Franklin Grange. It starts at 6 p.m. and will be catered by Trisha’s Treats. Tickets are $20 and available in the society’s library.