On Grant Cottage

I moved to the Albany area for college in 1976, and have stayed here year round since the fall of 1978. Grant has been one of my Civil War heros (along with Lincoln) ever since I started learning about the war (which my Grandfather Thomson never knew, he probably would have been horrified, or at least deeply disappointed).
But I didn't visit the Grant Cottage on Mount MacGregor until this past weekend. I'm glad I finally made the time.
It is a unique place, preserved ever since Grant's death in 1885, mostly unchanged (except for new period-correct wallpaper done in the 1940s.) The furniture and fixtures are more-or-less what they were when Grant died. The flower arrangements are the actual ones sent for Grant's funeral, treated in a unique method which has stood the test of time.
Though Grant only lived here for the last 6 weeks of his life, his dying presence as he struggled to finish his memoir is quite palpable. The office, where you enter the house, is the room where Grant sat with Mark Twain reviewing the manuscript. The next room, with two chairs face to face, is where Grant spent most of the last 6 weeks, sitting up because of the risk of choking to death as the cancer filled his mouth and throat. Finally, there is the deathbed in the next room, where the bed and bedspread are preserved.
Grant's Memoirs are a treasure, both as a military autobiography and as a work of literature. Grant Cottage in Wilton New York is where he completed them, in his last act before he died.