14
LeMoyne House
Ulysses S. Grant, 1860s and 1870s: A Familiar Guest
We have stopped at the LeMoyne House to honor the President who probably felt the most at home in Little Washington: Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was more than just a traveler passing through town. His good friend William W. Smith, the cousin of Grant’s wife Julia, was a prominent businessman in Washington who owned a beautiful house called Spring Hill. After serving as the Smiths’ home, the house later became a military academy for boys called Trinity Hall (seen from the Whiskey Rebellion Statue at Stop 10), and is now part of Trinity High School. Ulysses and Julia Grant first came to Washington in 1867 to attend the marriage of William W. Smith to Emma McKennan. Grant was not yet President, but he was already revered as the glorious victor of the Civil War. When he arrived for the wedding by train, citizens cheered for the man who had led them to “final victory over the rebellion.” They asked for a speech, but Grant told them that it was his “habit…to postpone everything of that kind until his next visit.” After his election to the Presidency, Grant returned for a week-long visit in 1869. Out of respect for the President, whose dislike of crowds was well-known, the people gathered along Main Street but remained quiet, allowing his carriage to pass without cheers or shouts. Local politicians asked him to lay the cornerstone for the new town hall, and despite his dislike of such events, he graciously complied. He did not make a speech. During his stay, Grant had to address a brewing national problem – attempts by speculators James Fisk and Jay Gould to corner the gold market. Grant dealt with this crisis by ordering the sale of government gold in a telegram from Little Washington. While not at Spring Hill, Grant also rode around town in his buckboard (an open-seat carriage) and attended services at the Methodist Episcopal Church on Wheeling Street, a predecessor of today’s First United Methodist on Beau St. The Grants visited twice more in the 1870s and corresponded regularly with William W. Smith until Grant’s death in 1885. When the town hall was demolished in the 1980s, the cornerstone was unearthed, and its box of historical mementos was delivered to the Washington County Historical Society, located here in the LeMoyne House. The house also has several of Grant’s personal items on display in a room devoted to Civil War history. Grant left plenty of mementos behind to remind Washingtonians of the special connection they had with our 18th President.
Directions to next stop:
Continue to the end of the block, cross S. College St., then proceed to the National Road marker near the corner of S. Lincoln St. and E. Maiden St. It looks like a miniature Washington Monument.
15
National Road Marker
The National Road, Presidential Highway
16
Former Washington Female Seminary
John Quincy Adams, 1843: Old Man Eloquent Falls Silent
The miniature Washington Monument in front of you is one of the most familiar symbols of the National Road. The castiron markers show the distances to major destinations, in this case to Cumberland, Maryland, and Wheeling, West Virginia.
Look ahead, and you’ll see the Swanson Science Center, which sits on the footprint of the former Washington Female Seminary, a girls’ school open from 1836 – 1948. Many famous visitors who came to Washington made a stop at the seminary.
The National Road was a significant factor in bringing many Presidents to Washington, particularly in the 19th century. The National Road provided the best means for many Presidents who lived in the Ohio Valley to travel to the national capital.
One of them was John Quincy Adams, our 6th President (1825 – 1829). He had been out of office for nearly fifteen years when he visited Washington, Pa., in December of 1843, but Adams had found another career in politics as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. It was his fellow representative Thomas McKennan of Washington who invited him to visit on a return trip from Cincinnati, where Adams had dedicated an observatory. The two men served in Congress together for nearly a decade and had been allies in the fight to lift Congress’s gag rule on anti-slavery petitions. They also worked together on the committee that established the Smithsonian Institution from the donation of James Smithson.
The completion of this first federally-funded highway in 1818 between Cumberland, Maryland, and Wheeling, then in Virginia, marked a vast improvement in national transportation. The all-weather road, built to exacting engineering standards, cut travel times significantly between the East and the Ohio River. The new stage coach lines that sprang up enabled a traveler to go from Baltimore to Wheeling in two days. Washington, Pennsylvania, became an important stop on the National Road, which eventually extended to Illinois. Numerous Presidents took advantage of this new route to the East. Andrew Jackson, as you heard in Stop 13, took the National Road en route to his inauguration. Other Presidents who followed this well-worn path to the White House included William Henry Harrison, James Polk, and Zachary Taylor. All of them stayed overnight in Washington, Pa. Traffic along the National Road dwindled to a trickle after the railroads succeeded in building lines through the Appalachian Mountains in the 1850s. Passenger trains were far speedier and far more comfortable than a stage coach. Presidential visitors to Little Washington for the next several generations would arrive by train, not by horseback or stagecoach. The arrival of the automobile age in the early twentieth century made for the first long-distance travel on the National Road since the 1850s. (US Route 40 largely follows the National Road.) Warren G. Harding, (pictured above) became the first President to drive through the borough in 1922. Subsequent Presidents who arrived in this locality by auto included Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and John F. Kennedy.
Directions to next stop:
Proceed along E. Maiden St. to S. Lincoln St., turn left onto S. Lincoln St. and walk to the end of the Swanson Science Center on your left. Turn left at E. Strawberry Ave., and stop in front of the building (near the circle with the flag pole).
In December, 1843, bells rang to announce Adams’ arrival, and more than 2,000 people gathered to see him at the courthouse. He seemed surprised and delighted by the outpouring of enthusiasm at his visit. Like his father John Adams, John Quincy never thought of himself as beloved by the people. He told them it was rare to see such a crowd “assembled for the purpose of showing marks of regard for me.” Perhaps nothing surprised him more, though, than his appearance at the Washington Female Seminary that evening. Principal Sarah Foster gave a speech praising his famous father. When it came time to reply, Adams was uncharacteristically quiet. For a man renowned for his speaking ability, and even nicknamed “Old Man Eloquent,” this was an unusual occurrence. Adams eventually spoke up to tell the crowd that this was “the first instance in which a lady has addressed me personally.” He soon recovered his famous speaking abilities in an answer praising Miss Foster, the assembled female students, and his late mother Abigail Adams.
Directions to next stop:
Take the path that leads you to the steps directly across E. Strawberry Ave. Go up the steps and proceed along the pathway that leads between Lazear Hall and the Admissions House. Stop at the brick entryway on E. Wheeling St., across the street from where the tour began.
this concludes the tour Thank you for your interest in the history of little washington We hope you have enjoyed the tour. Please stop back some day – may we suggest a visit to the LeMoyne House or the David Bradford House? And who knows, maybe you or someone you know will become President, and we can add another stop to the history of Presidential Washington. About this tour: This tour was written in 2012 by Dr. W. Thomas Mainwaring, Professor of History, and Dr. Jennifer Riddle Harding, Associate Professor of English. Our accounts of Washington’s presidential visitors are based primarily on reports in the Washington Examiner, Washington Observer, Washington Reporter, The Observer-Reporter, and Red & Black newspapers. We also referred to maps, census data, church and college histories, encyclopedias, and personal reflections. Congressional records were obtained from online versions of the National Intelligencer and Congressional Globe. We used the following sources to provide context on specific Presidents: Achenbach, Joel. “The Grand Idea: George Washington’s Potomac and the Race to the West.” New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Algeo, Matthew. “Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip.” Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011. Branton, Harriet. “Focus on Washington County,” vols. 1 – 4. Washington, PA: The Observer Publishing Company, 1979 – 1984. Coleman, Helen Turnbull Waite. “Banners in the Wilderness; Early Years of Washington and Jefferson College.” Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1956. Crumrine, Boyd. “History of Washington County with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men.” Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Digital Research Library, 1999. Online. Cunningham, Noble E. “The Presidency of James Monroe.” Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Ellis, Joseph J. “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.” New York: Vintage, 2002. Ellis, Joseph J. “His Excellency: George Washington.” New York: Vintage, 2005. Miller, William Lee. “Arguing about Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress.” New York: Vintage, 1998. Miller, Hilary Lee. “To ‘Pursue the Route Which Will Be of the Greatest Public Utility’: The National Road and Washington, Pennsylvania.” Master’s Thesis UNC Charlotte, 2011.