16-ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

You can’t go to St. Louis without taking a few pictures of the iconic Gateway Arch.

The Arch is 630 feet high and equally as wide. In other words when one is under it, it is too wide to get much of it in the camera lens.

I got as much of it as I could.

The Arch is constructed of stainless steel blocks that you can see in this picture.

I got up close to one of it’s triangle-shaped legs and looked up to the top. The moving clouds made it look like it's the Arch that is moving. It’s rather disconcerting and you can’t do that very long with out getting dizzy and falling over.

Across the top of the Arch are 32 small windows (16 on each side). If you ride to the top, and we did not, you can look out these windows and on a clear day, see for 30 miles.

We had discovered that Daniel Boone’s Historic Home was in nearby Defiance, Missouri and so left downtown St. Louis and headed for the hills…literally! It was a beautiful drive through the winding roads and rolling hills to get there.

This was the front of the house which faced a valley, river and a road in the distance.

Daniel Boone, born in Pennsylvania in 1734, lived here the last few years of his life. This house, called the “Boone Home,” was actually owned by his youngest son, Nathan, but Daniel considered it home.  He died here at age 86 in 1820. Nathan and his wife had 14 children so the house was very large. It was a practical home, not an fancy or opulent  one.

The road now is at the back of the home. The walls of the limestone house are 2-1/2 feet thick.

Our guide took us through the house explaining the details and history of it. The picture above the fireplace is one of the very few painted of Daniel Boone and he hated it. Said it made him look like an old man. Well it was done when he was an old man…of 84.

Daniel and his wife, Rebecca had 10 children. Two of their boys were killed by Indian attack for which Daniel always blamed himself. Their daughter, Jemimiah and a couple other girls were once kidnapped by Indians but rescued by her father and a couple other men.

I asked about the famous coon skin caps that I had seen for sale in the gift shop. The guide said that Daniel Boone hated coon skin caps. He thought they were uncomfortable and rather tacky.

The ceiling was hand hewn timbers. Originally it was covered with lath that had to be taken down during a stage of restoration. The home is now owned by Lindenwood University in St. Louis. They are waiting for funds to return the lath to its original location.

This was the family parlor.

This was the bedroom where Daniel Boone died.

This would have been the bedroom of Daniel’s son Nathan and his wife, Olive. (Notice the “indoor plumbing”…)

Upstairs was one bedroom for the boys and one for the girls.

Very few of the furnishings in the home were original, most had been dispersed by the family long ago. They didn’t know they would be famous and that those things would some day be of value.  At this point they have furnishings in the house that are “of the period.” They are constantly searching for articles from the original home.

On the fireplace mantel in one of the rooms was the picture of Daniel Boone, his son, Nathan, and Nathan’s wife, Olive.

Downstairs was the kitchen…

…and dining area. The floor jacks are temporary and again part of restoration.

In the valley below the home, they have moved in several buildings that are part of Boonesville Village. There were two school buses of children there that day learning how it was to have grown up in a time long ago. This cabin originally belonged to one of Daniel Boone’s brothers.

This was the Carpenter’s shop.

The day we were there it was full of school children and a docent explaining to them the use of hand tools to make furniture.

This was Peace Chapel.

As we walked around we came across this gentleman. He had been minding a fire at one of the buildings and was waiting for someone else to spell him for a while. He found it interesting that we were going East when everyone else (in his time period) was headed West.

From across an open field we could hear fiddle music coming from the Mercantile shop. When we went in this guy was fiddling away. 

He showed us around his store and tried to sell us “supplies for our trip.”

Don checked out one of his muskets.

Then in the doorway of the Grist Mill, was a lady who made baskets out of cedar bark. On this day she was making cording out of the underside of bark from the basswood tree. Because I make pine needle baskets, I found this especially interesting.

We then drove five miles to the little town (pop. 435) of New Melle looking for lunch. We had been told there was a “Grill” there that made really good sandwiches.

Well, it was “Bar and Grill,” with emphasis on the “Bar” part. The floor of this establishment was, I’m sure, there when O'l’ Dan’l Boone was in the neighborhood, and it probably hadn’t been swept often since then. 

Anyway, the menu was limited so we each ordered a hamburger. We were surprised to be served the best hamburgers I can remember. In fact, they were so thick, it was almost like a meatball between the pieces of bun.

So we enjoyed our burgers while listening to a group of local characters spinning tales. Then we headed back into St. Louis to check out the Ulysses S. Grant home.

White Haven was the name of the home and acreage belonging to Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia.  

Yes, I would have named it “Green Haven,” but it was a name passed down from a property owned by Julia’s family back east. (Paris Green was the “in” color of the time, but definitely not high on my list of favorite colors.)

The  house sat on around 800 acres, of rolling hills and trees. It is a beautiful area. It was no wonder they loved it there.

The focus of this historical site is on Ulysses S. Grant, the man, not on his career as a Civil War General or President.

There is a Visitor Center with a brief movie and a small museum inside a barn that Grant had designed for the horses he intended to breed and raise here.

We did tour the house but it was totally unfurnished.

The cooking area of the house was in a lower level.

The ceiling had beams of bark covered timbers.

There were these two out buildings behind the house. The one on the left is an ice house the other, a chicken house. It reminded Don of the chicken house they had when he was a kid.

A horseless Carriage was in the barn.

White Haven had been the childhood home of Julia Dent. Julia’s brother had been a roommate at school with Grant. At her brother’s insistence Grant began visiting the Dent family at White Haven and fell in love with Julia. 

He then went off to fight in the Mexican war and was gone for four years. They corresponded during that time and were married when he returned.

They began their family of four children at White Haven before Grant left for the Civil War where he became a General.

There was a lot of conflict between Grant and Julia’s family because Grant was opposed to slavery and Julia’s father, a Southern Democrat was a slave holder and supported succession over the issue of slavery. 

Julia’s brother, Fred fought for the Union while her brother John sided with the Confederacy. Grant himself was an outspoken supporter of the Union. Grant’s father disliked the slave-holding Dents and refused to visit his son at White Haven.

White Haven served as an anchor in Ulysses and Julia’s life together. It was here that they met and courted in the 1840’s, then raised a family and farmed the land in the 1850’s. They lived many other places due to Grant’s military career, especially during the Civil War, but their emotional attachment to White Haven remained strong.

In 1869 they began their stay in the White House, while continuing to make plans to retire at White Haven following Grant’s second term as president in the 1870’s. 

They then did a two-year long world tour and finally settled in New York to be closer to their children. Through it all they continually returned to White Haven and it remained the place they called home throughout their lives.

At this point in time there is a 281 acre property across from the home called Grant’s Farm. It houses the ancestral home of the Anheuser-Busch family. 

There are 900 animals of 100 different species there and it is open to the public and host various events. We saw herds of buffalo and deer just driving by.

This buffalo was just one of the herd.

When we first arrived at the Visitor Center, we missed the turn and drove a mile or two on further down the road. At one point I mentioned to Don that there were Clydesdale horses in a field. I didn’t realize until later that they were the famous Budweiser Clydesdale horses.

This is one of the gates into the Anheuser-Busch property. The gate has bronze statues of stags on either side. You may have seen them in Budweiser commercials with the team of Clydesdales coming through it.

Next stop, Springfield, Illinois and the Abraham Lincoln Museum.