Bit of HiStory
T he
By Pat Jollota
A
Almost dead center of Officers Row near Fort Vancouver stands The Grant House, the oldest house on the row, the only home still standing from the original nine built in 1849. It was the commanding officer’s residence and was the home of many distinguished military men. Over the years it served many purposes from officer’s club to library to bachelor officer’s quarters to old house museum, and now a restaurant. And over the years, visitors to the house have reported unexplained phenomena. Rumors started when the house was a museum, where the curator lived in an apartment in the back that is now a meeting room. His pet was a big orange cat named Chadwick who roamed the museum when it was closed. As cats will, Chadwick would see things and curiously follow them through the house, sometimes reacting oddly to whatever it was he followed. Many years later, the local television show, AM Northwest, was as curious as Chadwick, and brought a psychic to Grant House to film a ghost story for Halloween. I was there with the television crew as the psychic said that she sensed a sad man. On the wall in one of the rooms hung a group photograph taken in 1875, an image of about 20 people stationed at the barracks. The psychic placed her finger on one face. “This is the melancholy man.” It was Alfred Sully, who died in the house just four years after the group photograph was taken. He had lived a sad and melancholy life indeed, with a series of blows and disappointments. Alfred was the son of Thomas Sully, a famous portrait painter. Alfred showed an early interest in art, and continued painting into his adulthood, but as he matured, his professional interests turned to things mechanical. A career in engineering would suit him best. Off he went to West Point and soon to the Mexican-American War. He was sent to Monterey, California, where he met and married the beautiful, wealthy and cultured Manuela Jimino. A baby boy was soon born. But their joy was not to last. When their son was just six months old, a cholera epidemic swept into continued on next page
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Vancouver Family Magazine • www.vancouverfamilymagazine.com • October 2018
Ghost of r s e c R i o f w fO