This photo looks to be from 1869-70, so 15-plus years before Grant's death, when he was still in his vigorous 40s and the youngest president to serve up to that time. The two elder boys, on the right, boldly face the camera, while Julia and Nellie look away from it, and young Jesse takes center stage.
The struggles of Fred, the eldest, to take more responsibility for the family's precarious fortunes are portrayed in The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant, but Julia and Nellie play larger roles in the book. By 1885, Nellie, Grant's favorite child, was the unhappily married mother of three surviving children, whom she had to leave in England to attend her dying father. Her husband Algernon Sartoris, as perhaps can be seen below, was no gentleman.
Ulysses and Julia, on the other hand, had the happiest of marriages, loving to their children, and bound ever closer by the roller-coaster turmoil of their shared lives. They were each other's steadfast support through adversity and triumph -- a pattern which continued, indeed intensified, as Grant's death approached.
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