Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

is an autobiography written in 1884-1885. Racing against terminal throat cancer and financial ruin from a Ponzi scheme, the dying president chron icles his military career through the Mexican-American War and Civil War. MarkTwain,recognizing his friend’s exploitation by publishers, intervened to secure better terms and orchestrated an unprecedented marketing cam paign using Union veterans as door-to-door salesmen. The result became one of the nineteenth century’s bestselling books.Mathew Grant, the founder of the branch in America, of which I am a de scendant,reachedDorchester,Massachusetts,inMay,1630. In1635hemoved to what is nowWindsor,Connecticut, and wasthesurveyor for that colony for more than forty years. He was also, for many years of the time, town clerk. He was a married man when he arrived at Dorchester, but his chil drenwere all born in this country. Hiseldestson, Samuel, tooklandsonthe east side of the Connecticut River, opposite Windsor, whichhavebeenheld and occupied by descendants of his to this day. I amoftheeighthgenerationfromMathewGrant,andseventhfromSamuel. MathewGrant’sfirst wife died a fewyears after their settlement in Windsor, andhesoon aftermarriedthewidowRockwell,who,withherfirsthusband, hadbeenfellow-passengerswithhimand his firstwife,ontheshipMaryand John, from Dorchester, England, in 1630. Mrs. Rockwell had several chil dren by her first marriage, and others by her second.In the fifth descending generation my great grandfather, Noah Grant, and his younger brother, Solomon, held commissions in the English army, in 1756, in the war against the French and Indians. Both were killed that year. My grandfather, also named Noah, was then but nine years old. At the breaking out of the war of the Revolution, after the battles of Concord and Lexington, he went with a Connecticut company to join the Continental army, and was present at the battle of Bunker Hill. He served until the fall of Yorktown, or through the entire Revolutionary war. He must, however, have been on furlough part of the time-as I believe most of the soldiers of that period were-for he married in Connecticut during the war, had two children, and was a widower at the close. Soon after this he emigrated to Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and settled near the town of Greens burg in that county. He took with him the younger of his two children, Peter Grant. The elder, Solomon, remained with his relatives in Connecti cut until old enough to do for himself, when he emigrated to the British West Indies