Julia Grant Returns to Washington
Former First Lady Tires of New York City
By 1895, Julia Boggs Grant, the widow of President Ulysses S. Grant, had grown tired of living in New York City. After leaving Washington in 1877 under a cloud of scandals that marked her husband’s administration, Julia had hoped that the dust had settled enough for a return to Washington.
The return to Washington was a practical move for Julia Grant. Along with many of her lifelong friends, she also had a considerable amount of family in town: a son, a daughter, and two sisters.
Julia’s divorced daughter, Ellen “Nellie,” who married Englishman Algernon Sartoris in an elaborate White House ceremony in 1874 that was billed as one of the greatest American social events of the 19th century, had returned to Washington the year before her mother and was living in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.
Julia’s son, Colonel Frederick Dent Grant, who had married Ida Marie Honoré, the daughter of Chicago real estate magnate Henry Hamilton Honoré, was already well-established in Washington when Julia arrived.
Upon her arrival in Washington, Julia Grant moved in with her daughter Nellie in a leased house at 2018 R Street, NW. The two then bought a marble-faced mansion at 2111 Massachusetts Avenue that had belonged to Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont (a hotel now stands on the site). There, Julia was able to indulge her love of entertaining, hosting an open reception every Tuesday afternoon during the winter social season months. Although suffering from severe rheumatism, she would force herself to remain standing to greet guests, refusing to ever be seen using her wheelchair.
During her years in Washington, Julia would become so feeble that it was impossible for her to continue to socialize in society. She spent her final summers in Ontario, Canada in the town of Cobourg, where Nellie had rented a house with a lake view.
Julia died from heart and kidney complications in her Massachusetts Avenue home on December 14, 1902 at the age of 74. Her daughter Nellie was by her side.
President Theodore Roosevelt attended Julia’s Washington, D.C. funeral services at the Metropolitan Methodist Church. Roosevelt’s appearance at the funeral made national headlines, as it was as much a tribute to the memory of the venerated General Grant as it was to Julia herself. Julia was interred in a matching sarcophagus beside her husband inside the Grant mausoleum on Riverside Drive in New York City.
Julia Grant was the first First Lady to ever write a memoir, but she was never able to find a publisher in her lifetime. She had been dead almost 75 years before The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant) was finally published in 1975 by Southern Illinois University Press.