Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site

Constructed between 1812 and 1816, White Haven was the childhood home of Julia Dent Grant in St. Louis, Missouri. While stationed at nearby Jefferson Barracks with the 4th U.S. Infantry, Ulysses S. Grant was invited to visit White Haven and met Julia in February 1844. The two fell in love, began a courtship, and were engaged to be married several months later. From 1854 to 1859, Grant worked as a farmer at White Haven and tried to support his wife and four children by raising fruit and vegetable crops and selling firewood. Enslaved African Americans did most of the work at White Haven. The Dent family owned as many as thirty enslaved people in 1850, and Grant himself owned an enslaved man named William Jones for a period before freeing him on March 29, 1859. After the Civil War, Ulysses and Julia Grant purchased the White Haven property and owned it for nearly twenty years until shortly before General Grant's death in 1885. Today the site is managed by the National Park Service. Among the activities at the site include an orientation film, a self-guided museum, and tours of the White Haven estate.