MISSOURI
Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site
St. Louis, Missouri
After Grant resigned from the army in 1854, he and his wife, Julia, lived on a tract of land near St. Louis that had been a wedding present from Julia’s father.
Grant farmed, sold cordwood, and tried his hand at selling real estate in the city. He was successful at none of these endeavors, and in 1860 the family moved to Galena, Illinois, where Grant’s father owned a tannery.
While in Missouri, Grant built this large Southern-style log home. It was roomy but ugly. Julia wrote to a friend: “The little house looked so unattractive that we facetiously decided to call it ‘Hardscrabble.’ ” The house, which stands now on five of its original one thousand acres, gives a glimpse of the Grants at what was probably the lowest point of their lives.
The Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site is open daily, 9:00-5:00, except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Rangers give building tours. Admission is free. The site is immediately across from the Anheuser-Busch “Grant’s Farm” attraction. From I-270, exit at Gravois Rd. and go northeast about 2.5 miles. The site is a half-mile down on the left at 7400 Grant Road. For information phone 314-842-3298.
The Historic Mansion at Elfindale
Springfield, Missouri
Springfield was a military objective in the war. The Confederates occupied the town in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in 1861, but Union forces recaptured it the next year. Later, numerous attempts to retake Springfield failed. Wild Bill Hickok was stationed here as a scout and spy for Federal forces.
This handsome Queen Anne-style inn was built as a private home in 1892, and was sold to an order of nuns in 1906; it was a Catholic girls’ school until 1964. It now is owned by a local church and managed as an inn by Jeff Wells.
The mansion is big. It contains 22,000 square feet with thirty-five rooms, of which thirteen are guest suites. The rooms on the main floor are used occasionally for weddings and receptions.
Address: 1701 S. Fort, Springfield, MO 65807; tel: 417-831-5400 or 800-443-0237; fax: 417-831-2965.
Accommodations: Thirteen guest rooms, all with private baths.
Amenities: Air-conditioning, off-street parking, room phones.
Rates: $$-$$$. All major credit cards and personal checks.
Restrictions: No children under ten, no pets, no smoking, no alcoholic beverages allowed on premises.
Lafayette House
St. Louis, Missouri
James B. Eads, a self-taught river engineer, built this house in 1876 as a wedding present for his daughter. When the war shut down river traffic, St. Louis commerce was paralyzed. Eads proposed building seven ironclad gunboats to help the Union forces. In a mere sixty-three days, he built the ironclads that Grant used to clear the Mississippi and cut the Confederacy in two. After the war, in 1874, he constructed the first bridge to span the Mississippi River, which was also the world’s first arched steel truss bridge.
Hosts Nancy Buhr and Annalise Millet have furnished the three-story Queen Anne with a pleasing mixture of antiques and contemporary furniture, and the house was recently rated a two-diamond inn by AAA.
Address: 2156 Lafayette Ave., St. Louis, MO 63104; tel: 314-772-4429 or 800-641-8965; fax: 314-664-2156.
Accommodations: Six double rooms, three with private baths.
Amenities: Air-conditioning, phones in rooms, TV, VCR, and video library.
Rates: $$. All major credit cards and personal checks.
Restrictions: Limited facility for children, call first; no pets, no smoking.
Wilson’s Greek Battlefield
Republic, Missouri
Missouri seemed to be on its way out of the Union when the Battle of Wilson’s Creek was fought here on August 10, 1861. The governor, pro-Confederate Claiborne Jackson, had called out the state militia but failed in his attempt to seize the U.S. arsenal in St. Louis.
Governor Jackson, General Sterling Price, and their 5,170 troops retreated to the southwestern part of the state, where they were joined by five thousand Confederate troops commanded by General Ben McCulloch.
In pursuit was Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon, and some 5,400 Union soldiers. On August 2, they overwhelmed a vanguard of Confederates near Springfield. During the fighting, however, Lyon learned that he was badly outnumbered.
Determined to press on, Lyon launched a surprise attack at dawn on August 10. The Confederates, encamped near Wilson’s Creek, reacted quickly. Union forces supporting Lyon were driven back. Colonel Franz Sigel led his German-Americans into a flanking attack, taking the rebels by surprise. His attack faltered when he mistook some Confederates for Union troops. They tore into Sigel’s troops, scattering them. This enabled the Confederates to concentrate on Lyon’s forces on the crest of a ridge.
Lyon was slain and by late morning the Union troops were retreating toward Springfield. The Union lost 1,317 men, the Confederates, 1,222. Price would win another battle at Lexington, but the Confederates were never able to get Missouri out of the Union. During the rest of the war, Missouri would have two state governments, one Union and one Confederate.
Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield is three miles east of Republic and ten miles southwest of Springfield, Missouri. The Visitor Center has a film, map, and museum that inform visitors about the battle and its relevance to the war. The park is open daily 8:00-5:00, except Christmas and New Year’s Day. Admission is $2 for adults, $4 for a family. During summer months, tours and living-history demonstrations are held at Bloody Hill and the Ray House, which served as a field hospital during the battle. A self-guided driving tour on a 4.9-mile one-way loop road takes visitors to these and six other battle sites. For information phone 417-732-2662.
Walnut Street Inn
Springfield, Missouri
Its location at the entrance to the Ozarks made Springfield a military objective in the war. Confederates took it over in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, but Union forces recaptured it the next year and kept it, turning back numerous Confederate attacks.
Wild Bill Hickok was a scout and spy for Union forces headquartered here. The Springfield National Cemetery, on Seminole St., has the graves of 1,514 Union soldiers, some seven hundred of them unknown, lost at Wilson’s Creek and other battles in the area. The Confederate Cemetery, established in 1870, has 463 gravesites, some of which hold unknown soldiers.
The Walnut Street Inn, once known as the McCann-Jewell house, is one of the few remaining Victorian Gothic houses in Springfield. Charles McCann, who built the house for his young bride, went on to become one of the four làrgest wagon makers in the country. Harry S. Jewell, a later owner, was a prominent newspaper publisher.
Turn-of-the-century elegance and hospitality explain why Country Inns magazine chose it as one of the top twelve inns in the country. All of the guest rooms are furnished with antiques, and some feature a whirlpool bath and stocked bar, and all have cable TV. Two doors away is the satellite Cottage Inn with three additional suites. Breakfast is a delight, with Ozark treats like piping hot persimmon muffins, warm walnut bread, and freshly squeezed orange juice chilled to perfection.
Address: 900 E. Walnut St., Springfield, MO 65806; tel: 417-864-6346 or 800-593-6346; fax: 417-864-6184; E-mail: walnutstinnepcis.net.
Accommodations: Six guest rooms in the main house, four in the carriage house, and two suites in the Cottage Inn, all with private baths.
Amenities: Air-conditioning, off-street parking, bathrobes, phones and cable TV in rooms.
Rates: $$-$$$. Major credit cards and personal checks.
Restrictions: No pets, no smoking.
Garth Woodside Mansion
Hannibal, Missouri
There’s a fort just outside of town where Union troops guarded the railroad, but most people don’t come to Hannibal to see that. They come to see the boyhood home of a young man who after three weeks as a recruit in the Confederate army deserted and went West.
That boy,
Samuel Clemens, found fame as Mark Twain, and made Hannibal famous with two books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Many years later Twain’s company published the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, who was nearly broke and dying of throat cancer, and earned over $450,000 in royalties for Mrs. Grant.
This inn is the Second Empire mansion where in 1882 Twain stayed with his boyhood friend John Garth when he returned to Hannibal. Some say Garth was one of the models for Tom Sawyer. In 1988, when Irv and Diane Feinberg made the house an inn, they retained many of its original furnishings.
The inn has a flying staircase that vaults three stories without visible means of support, an impressive library, and the room where Mark Twain slept. The inn provides guests with nineteenth-century nightshirts, which may be worn not only for sleeping but also at breakfast.
Address: RR 3, Box 578, Hannibal, MO 63401; tel: 573-221-2789; E-mail: garthenemonet.com.
Accommodations: Eight double rooms, all with private baths.
Amenities: Air-conditioning, off-street parking, afternoon refreshments, fishing on the property.
Rates: $$. Visa, MasterCard, and personal checks.
Restrictions: No children under twelve, no pets, restricted smoking.
About the Author
CHUCK LAWLISS grew up in Vermont listening to his relatives swap Civil War stories. Three of his great-great grandfathers fought in the war, including one who was a prisoner for eighteen months at Andersonville, the notorious Confederate prison camp.
He is the author of the bestselling Civil War Sourcebook and Travel Guide (Harmony Books) and has written many magazine and newspaper articles on various aspects of the war. He is currently researching historic inns and sites of the Revolutionary War for a book to be called George Washington Slept Here.
Mr. Lawliss was a newspaper and magazine journalist for many years, writing for the Associated Press, New York Herald Tribune, Holiday Magazine, and Art In America. He lives in Philadelphia.
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