{"id":289,"date":"2011-08-01T07:03:30","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T14:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rjjblog.maryjanesfarm.org\/wordpress\/?p=289"},"modified":"2011-08-01T07:03:30","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T14:03:30","slug":"first-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/289","title":{"rendered":"First Lady"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tHitch up your buggies, gals\u2014today I\u2019m taking you away to the historic town of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.galena.org\/\">Galena, Illinois<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->In the 17<sup>th<\/sup> and 18<sup>th<\/sup> centuries, Galena was a booming town along the Mississippi River known for its ample lead reserves. It\u2019s also the site of Ulysses S. Grant\u2019s home and the DeSoto House Hotel, once host to Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln (who spoke from the hotel balcony in 1856).<\/p>\n<p>Despite a swift end to the lead boom in the 1900\u2019s, Galena\u2019s geography is still fascinating. Galena falls in the Driftless Zone, a geographic area that wasn\u2019t covered by glaciers in the last ice age. While glaciers drifted over and flattened the rest of Illinois, Galena remained unscathed and got to keep its characteristic hills, valleys, and cliffs of exposed rock. Because of this, the town is a multi-level treat to behold.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_124\" style=\"width: 370px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-124\" class=\"size-full wp-image-124\" title=\"20110418-Galena_Il_Galena_Hist\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/geography\/20110418-Galena_Il_Galena_Hist.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"270\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-124\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Galena, Illinois, photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons, IvoShandor<\/p><\/div>\n<p>And then there\u2019s the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.granthome.com\/\">Ulysses S. Grant home<\/a>, still furnished the way the Grant family liked it and open for tours. On the grounds stands the quiet guardian of Galena, a statue of the woman Grant worshiped\u2014his wife, Julia. The statue isn\u2019t conventionally beautiful. Julia was plump and notably cross-eyed (Grant said he liked her all the more for it). But to look at the statue is to take in the image of a strong, determined, studied woman who risked her safety to join her husband on the battlefield whenever possible. She left a legacy of devotion, as well as her memoir, the first to be written by a First Lady.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_125\" style=\"width: 270px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-125\" class=\"size-full wp-image-125\" title=\"20110418-Julia_Grant\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/geography\/20110418-Julia_Grant.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"260\" height=\"360\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-125\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Julia Grant, photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons, Library of Congress<\/p><\/div>\n<p>You can also go to Galena to see working floodgates, the iconic Main Street used in the movie \u201cField of Dreams,\u201d and perhaps even an encounter with the supernatural. Galena is regularly investigated by paranormal researchers due to the high levels of ghostly activity reported by residents. Ghosts or no, Galena is a stronghold for the nation\u2019s history that you don\u2019t have to take a trip out East to see, and a snapshot of times that are both long gone and beautifully preserved.<\/p>\n<p>Did I miss anything, Galena lovers? What other small towns do you know of that just ooze history the way Galena does? Have any of you read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Personal-Memoirs-Julia-Dent-Grant\/dp\/0809314436\">Julia Dent Grant\u2019s memoir<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-126\" title=\"20110418-julia-grant-book\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/geography\/20110418-julia-grant-book.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"264\" height=\"360\" \/>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hitch up your buggies, gals\u2014today I\u2019m taking you away to the historic town of Galena, Illinois. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/289\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[347,419,446,479,917,924],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geography","tag-geography-2","tag-history","tag-illinois","tag-julia-dent-grant","tag-travel","tag-ulysses-s-grant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}