Artist: Oliver Ingraham Lay (1845–1890)
Ulysses S. Grant
GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON (1822–1885), inducted by 1920, painted by 1890
Ulysses S. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, and attended boarding school for a short time in Maysville, Kentucky, before being appointed to the US Military Academy at West Point. He served under General Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War and then led the Union Army to many significant victories during the Civil War. Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief of the Army in 1864. Grant was elected the eighteenth President of the United States in 1869; he served two terms. His administration was charged with helping to stabilize the nation after the war. President U. S. Grant enforced civil rights and fought against the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction period.
According to a metal plate on the back of the frame, this painting, by New York artist Oliver Ingraham Lay, was presented to the U. S. Grant Post No. 327 of the Grand Army of the Republic in Brooklyn in 1911, many years after the artist’s death. How the work came to the Saddle & Sirloin collection is now unknown.
Source: Saddle & Sirloin Guidebook 2026, p. 100