Description:

Grant Ulysses



Significant Remnants of Ulysses S. Grant’s Personally Owned Cigar from His Very Last Box

While several of our presidents are known to have smoked cigars, perhaps Grant did so most famously.  As a General, he can be seen in photographs near battlefields chomping on a stogie like the one that these remnants came from.  It is also well known that Grant smoked throughout his presidency.  This cigar was originally purchased from the Swann Auction Galleries sale of Presidential Americana from the collection of William Wheeler III, and although it was falling apart, it still reached a price of four figures!

 

Included with the cigar was an 1889 letter from West Point signed by T. Bee.  The letter reads, “I take pleasure in sending you a cigar, one of the last in the last box used by Gen. U.S. Grant.  Lieut. Totten was ordered to join his battery (Light Batt., 4th Art’y, Newport, RI).  Wagenor and I were ordered to pack his furniture.  Lieut. Totten gave the enclosed bottle & cigar to Wagenor.  He gave it to me, and I, knowing the captain’s feeling and politics in regard to Gen. Grant, take pleasure in presenting it to Capt. J.A. Fessenden, if the captain will take the trouble to write a line to Lieut. Totten.  He will verify my statement as to genuineness and how I came in possession of the cigar.”

 

The story is perfectly credible.  1st Lieutenant Charles A.L. Totten (1851-1908) of the 4th United States Artillery served from 1883 to 1886 as Professor of Military Science and Tactics at the Cathedral School of St. Paul, a new military high school in Garden City, New York.  President Grant died in upstate New York in 1885.  In April 1886, Totten’s term at St Paul ended, and he was indeed transferred to Fort Adams in Rhode Island.  The letter author and his friend Wagenor were likely cadets at St. Paul.  As for the cigar, Charles Jacobs & Co. began manufacturing Las Palmas cigars in San Francisco in 1883, and soon became the leading cigar manufacturer on the Pacific coast.  We know President Grant had significant West Coast connections and Las Palmas cigars were shipped in from San Francisco.

 

We know of no other of Ulysses S. Grant’s cigars that have been offered on the Americana market.



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May 15, 2019 10:30 AM EDT
Wilton, CT, US

University Archives

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