08/28/2026
Puget Sound Genealogical Society members like reading about interesting & unique stories about history. Thanks for the picture 🎙😎💬
As August comes to an end, children across the country return to school. Many modern-day children will bike, walk, drive, or take a bus to get there. A century and a half ago, President Ulysses S. Grant’s youngest children also attended school, but their means of transportation were a bit different.
When Grant became president in 1869, his two youngest children were still in school. Nellie was fourteen and Grant’s youngest son, Jesse, was eleven. Theodore R. Davis, an artist with Harper’s Weekly, captured this image of the children on their way to school in a pony wagon driven by a soldier.
The cart was pulled by Reb and Billy Button, two of the Grant family’s ponies. Reb was apparently captured during the Vicksburg campaign of the Civil War and given to Frederick Grant, the president’s eldest son. Frederick was away at West Point by 1869, so he gave Reb to the younger children. According to Harper’s, the other pony, Billy Button, “belong[ed] to the era of peace.”
Credit: Harper’s Weekly, Library of Congress
