October Legends and Americana Ending November 14th
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/15/2015
A large mounted albumen photograph, 10” x 8” by Pach Bros., New York, titled “Gen. Grant and Friends/At His Cottage by the Sea, 1875 [sic]”. Shows Grant seated with his wife Julia, and her father, Col. Frederick Dent, in front of their summer cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey. Back layer of mount removed photo service stamps and inked notations on verso, creased and chipped at corners; horizontal crease and small tear at bottom margin do little to detract from the overall presentation.
A superb photograph of President Grant seated with his wife and his father-in-law Frederick Fayette Dent (1786-1873), together with what appear to be other members of the Dent family. The photographer misidentified the year as 1875 (an impossibility considering that Frederick Dent died in December 1873). Already advanced in years, Frederick Fayette Dent became part of the Grant household in 1864. A staunch Democrat, Dent looked askance at his son-in-law’s radical politics, and never concealed his politics to Grant or anyone who visited the White House. This is likely one of the last images taken of Julia’s father. According to Julia Grant in her memoirs, her father enjoyed staying in Long Branch recalling, “My beloved and honored father enjoyed his last, declining happy years there. The General was always so, so lovely to my dead father, and pap was so proud of him, and I’m sure this delightful sea air prolonged his life for years”. (Julia Grant, “Memoirs, 177)
Julia also fondly recalled how her husband relished his working vacations at the Jersey Shore: “Tired and weary as he was with his monotonous official duties, he hastened with delight, as soon as Congress had adjourned.” It was a place for him to reinvigorate himself, allowing the President “to gather new strength and vigor for the winter’s Campaign in Washington”. Beginning in 1869, the Grant’s made Long Branch, New Jersey their annual summer retreat, thoroughly enjoying the resort town’s “health-giving breezes and its wide and restful piazzas.” Philadelphia “Public Ledger” publisher George William Childs (1829-1894), together with his friends Anthony Drexel, George Pullman, and Moses Taylor, polled their money to purchase the summer cottage for the Grant family in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1869.