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00000173-90ba-d20e-a9f3-93ba728f0000In 1940, the Federal Writers Project produced a massive book detailing the scenic treasures and everyday life along Ohio’s roads - roads that went through the big cities as well as through farmland and tucked-away places. Seventy years later, the roads have changed and the pulse of the people is different – in some places. Picking up where the Federal Writers Project left off, in 2012, the Ohio Humanities Council launched the Road Trip! radio series and The New Ohio Guide Audio Tours at SeeOhioFirst.org. This new guide takes those older routes and gives them a 21st century twist, recreating them as free downloadable audio tours, and the Road Trip! radio series.

New Ohio Guide: Birthplace of a President

The birthplace of Ulysses S. Grant

There’s a quiet, but distinct charm about Pt. Pleasant. Maybe it’s the name. Or it’s location at the mouth of Big Indian Creek. It’s small enough that it might have disappeared from the map by now except for its claim to a bit of very important history. Ulysses S. Grant was born here on April 27, 1822.

Grant’s Birthplace, an Ohio State Memorial, is a little white cabin that sits in the middle of a handful of other houses. Loretta Fuhrman has been caretaker here since 1966.

"We have three rooms, the big room in the front measures 16 ½ by 19 feet and that was the entire home when the Grant family lived here. The two back rooms now were added after the Grants moved to Georgetown when Grant was 11 months old," says Furhman.

Ulysses’ father, Jesse Grant, was a tanner.

"And, in the front room we have the boot that his father made in his tannery," says Furhman. "It’s almost 200 years old. And, the chest at the bottom of the bed with the initials on it, JRG was also made by Jessie Root Grant, Grant’s father, and General Grant took it to West Point and kept papers and documents in it."

His father asked him one day what he would like to do when he got older and Grant really had his heart set on working on a riverboat going up and down the waterways of the Ohio River.

Grant lived in Georgetown in Brown County until the age of 17, when he left to attend West Point Academy.

"His father asked him one day what he would like to do when he got older and Grant really had his heart set on working on a riverboat going up and down the waterways of the Ohio River, but his father didn’t see that for his son," says Fuhrman.

The picnic area across the road from Grant’s Birthplace is a good place to get a glimpse of the river that called to Grant. It was a lot busier in his day.

There was a wharf here, where people would bring their hogs head of tobacco down and ship it down the river to Mississippi, New Orleans and all down through the south," says Fuhrman. "The river was remarkably shallower then too. Dams built in the 20th century have made the river deeper and wider. I can remember my grandmother telling me when I was growing up that in the summertime the river would be so low that the people would take baskets and go pick up coal that had fallen off of the barges and use it to burn in the winter time."

Grant Memorial Bridge, that takes travelers on US 52 across Big Indian Creek, is also worth appreciating. It retains artifacts from an earlier bridge built and includes canons that were reportedly some of the first shot in the Civil War.

"It was a big iron bridge. And, it was a beautiful bridge and my boys when they were growing up used to jump off of it into the creek. But, then in 1983 they imploded the bridge," says Furhman.

Many things, like the bridge, have changed in Pt. Pleasant over the years. But it’s still the little town on the Ohio where Ulysses S. Grant was born.

"There were only three houses in the community when the Grants lived here. It’s just still a very small town. We have like 76 people living here and we kind of like it that way," says Furhman.

Download an audio tour of Rt. 52 and explore it on your own. Just visit SeeOhioFirst.org and click on The New Ohio Guide. The New Ohio Guide is produced by the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.