The Women of White Haven

Ellen Wrenshall Dent

NPS

White Haven, the childhood home of Julia Dent Grant, is a site where overlapping stories of 19th-century life come into focus. From the genteel routines of the Dent family’s daughters to the contributions of enslaved women, the histories of these women illuminate daily life in antebellum America in the era before the Civil War.

The Dent and Grant Women

Julia Dent Grant was born in 1826 as the fifth of seven children and the eldest daughter of Frederick F. Dent and Ellen Wrenshall Dent. She grew up having access to education, leisure, and social mobility. She rode horses, fished, and explored the fields and woods of White Haven. From the age of ten until seventeen she attended the Misses Mauros’ Academy in St. Louis. There, she studied literature, history, philosophy, and other subjects considered appropriate for young women of her time. These formative experiences shaped the woman who would later become one of the most prominent first ladies of the nineteenth century.

Julia was not alone in this world. Her sisters, Ellen Wrenshall “Nellie” Dent and Emily Marbury “Emma” Dent, shared that life at White Haven and help broaden our understanding of women’s roles within the Dent household. Nellie, two years younger than Julia, was often described as spirited and sociable. She married Dr. Alexander Sharp and maintained close ties with White Haven and the wider Dent family. Emma, the baby of the Dent family, was around six or seven years old when young Lt. Grant came to visit White Haven for the first time. Emma was the first of the Dent women to meet him, as Julia was still away at school. Emma recalled in her own memoirs how she liked to tease both Ulysses and Julia. “I knew him best because I had known him longest.” Nellie and Emma had a friendly and loving relationship with their famous brother-in-law well into adulthood. Together, the sisters' lives illustrate the varied opportunities available to wealthy white women in the antebellum era. Their lives were shaped by marriage, family obligation, and domestic support provided by enslaved labor.

At the center of the household stood Ellen Wrenshall Dent, the family matriarch. She managed the domestic operations of White Haven until her death in 1857. In the plantation household, this role carried considerable authority. Ellen Dent oversaw food preparation, clothing production, childrearing, entertaining of guests, and the daily routines that defined domestic life. She depended directly on the labor of enslaved women, whose lives were tightly controlled by the system she helped administer. Julia described her mother as “a great reader, fond of poetry and music. She was beautiful, kind, and gentle.” While Julia’s father was skeptical of his daughter’s suitor Ulysses, Mrs. Dent was kind and supportive of him. According to Julia Grant, Mrs. Dent saw something in her son-in-law that very few people did in the 1850s. She predicted that he would become a statesman and a philosopher. "That little man [Grant] will fill the highest place in this government. His light is now hid under a bushel, but circumstances will occur, and at no distant day, when his worth and wisdom will be shown and appreciated. He is a philosopher. He is a great statesman.” Ellen Dent died of a respiratory ailment in January 1857. At the time of her death, the Grant family was living at Hardscrabble, the cabin that Grant had built about a mile north of the Dent home.

Ulysses and Julia Grant’s only daughter Ellen Wrenshall “Nellie” Grant Sartoris spent part of her early life at White Haven during the 1850s. Born on the 4^th of July in 1855, Nellie was jokingly told by her oldest brother Fred that the fireworks on Independence Day were for her birthday. Growing up during a period of increasing national tension over slavery, Nellie’s life was shaped by the support of enslaved labor and the social structure in the Dent household. Nellie spent her teenage years as a resident of the White House in the national spotlight. At the age of eighteen, she married Algernon Sartoris in a ceremony at the White House. Nellie and Algernon had previously met on a tour of England. The couple moved to Southampton, England after the ceremony and raised three children. Unfortunately, it proved to be an unhappy marriage and the couple separated in 1890. They were granted a divorce, and Nellie and the children moved back to the United States after his death in 1893. Nellie married an Illinois attorney, Frank Jones, in 1912.

The Enslaved Women of White Haven

Among the enslaved women overseen by Mrs. Dent was Mary Robinson, the family’s cook, whose culinary skill was remembered in detail by Julia Dent Grant years later. Mary Robinson grew up on the White Haven farm and was close in age to Julia Dent. Julia praised Robinson’s breads, cakes, custards, and soups, offering rare glimpses into the talents of an enslaved woman whose expertise sustained the household. These recollections underscore the dependence of the Dent family on enslaved women’s labor and knowledge. Mary is thought to be one of the enslaved people who escaped from White Haven in 1864. Shortly after Ulysses Grant’s death in 1885, Mary Robinson was interviewed by the St. Louis Republican newspaper. Mary’s interview is an important historical account, being one of the few times that formerly enslaved people from White Haven were heard. At the time, Robinson was living with a family in the city of St. Louis, working as their laundress. The interviewer focused on Robinson’s relationship with Grant and his family much more than the circumstances of her own life. She appeared to be intimately familiar with the courtship of Ulysses and Julia and mentioned Mrs. Dent’s fondness for Ulysses. “Mrs. Dent used to say to me, ‘I like that young man. There is something noble in him.’”

Another important voice from White Haven is Mary Henry, who was born into enslavement on the property around the same time as Julia. In an interview featured in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1902, Henry recalled growing up alongside the Dent children and later caring for Julia’s own children. “When her children were born, they were handed to me as they came into the world, and it was my hands that first put on them the clothes that my hands had made.” Mary was married sometime after the Civil War and had three of her own children, Phyllis, Jason, and an unidentified son who lived in New Orleans. Her testimony is one of the few firsthand accounts from an enslaved woman connected to White Haven and offers critical insight into the intimate relationships that defined plantation life.

While many other enslaved women and girls lived and worked at White Haven, there are few known first person historical accounts like those from Mary Robinson and Mary Henry. As an adult, Emma Dent recalled several of her enslaved playmates including Henrietta, Ann, and Sue. In Julia Dent Grant’s Personal Memoirs, she discusses four enslaved people informally gifted to her by her father. One woman, Jule, served as Julia’s maid and nurse and traveled with her during the Civil War. When traveling to visit her husband, Julia would often travel with Jule. While traveling back to St. Louis from Nashville in 1864, Julia received word that her oldest son Fred was deathly ill with typhoid. Jule happened to be with her at the time. During a train stop in Louisville, Jule left the train car and was never seen by Mrs. Grant again. “I suppose she feared losing her freedom if she returned to Missouri,” Julia wrote in her Personal Memoirs. "I regretted this as she was always a favorite of mine." Very little else is known of Jule, though Julia Grant received news that Jule had married not long after her escape from slavery. A fictionalized account of Jule’s story can be found in the novel Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule by Jennifer Chiaverini.

As children, the Dent and Grant daughters lived and sometimes played with the enslaved girls. Each of the Dent daughters was informally “gifted” enslaved people by their father. Although Julia never legally owned any enslaved people outright, their father sold several enslaved people to Emma during the Civil War. A story of intricate relationships emerges when examining the lives of Julia Dent Grant, her mother and sisters, and the enslaved women of White Haven such as Mary Robinson, Mary Henry, Jule, and others. White Haven emerges not simply as the home of a future president, but as a place where women’s daily lives reveal the complexities of American society prior to the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.