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| One of many pictures of Ulysses S. Grant in Marie Kelsey's collection. The source of this picture is unknown, but it may be a copy of a hand-colored version from a period photograph. (MPR Photo/Bob Kelleher) |
Duluth, Minn. — Marie Kelsey is a little embarrassed by the somewhat cluttered room upstairs in her otherwise tidy home. It's the Ulysses S. Grant room, or, if you will, Kelsey's mini-museum in honor of the man who saved the Union.
Kelsey begins a tour with the dinnerware, mounted on display on book shelves.
"I have a lot of plates with his picture on them, a lot of commemorative plates," Kelsey says.
Kelsey has collected hundreds of pieces -- photographs, collector spoons and books. She's got stranger stuff, too, like commemorative license plates and a handful of heavy capped mugs.
"They're steins, they're decorative steins," Kelsey says of the row of large, ornate beer mugs. "I think that's the Capitol dome, actually, with Grant on the top of it, I think. I'm not entirely certain."
The steins may be an ironic tribute, considering the general's reputation for tipping a few himself.
Then there are plates -- from the recently manufactured to period pieces from the early 1900s. One plate, she thinks, was hand-painted by Ulysses Grant's sister.
A hundred years ago, America was obsessed with Gen. Grant. Marie Kelsey caught the Grant bug only recently. It bit while Kelsey was taking care of her ailing mother.
"She wasn't doing well, and my dad wasn't either," Kelsey recalls. "So I moved her over here from Walker."
The room served as her mother's bedroom.
"And I had to find ways to entertain her, because she was pretty much housebound," Kelsey says. "So I went down to the public library and got the Ken Burns video series."
Ken Burn's "The Civil War" was a popular public television series in the fall of 1990, although Kelsey says she missed the original screening on television.
"We started watching it, and I just became very interested in Grant," Kelsey says. "Ulysses S. Grant plays a key figure in the series, as the general in charge of the victorious Union Army."
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Some people do crafts. I do Grant.
- Marie Kelsey
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Kelsey began reading about the modest man from Galena, Illinois. Grant's story is the rise from abject failure, to nation-changing success, and right back to failure.
"He had a really rough time of it," Kelsey says. "And he was the kind of person that people always said, 'Well, Grant, he just didn't amount to much.'"
Grant was mediocre at West Point. Fair or not, he left the Army labeled a drunk. Grant failed at farming and wasn't much at business.
"Actually, he was reduced to selling wood on the street corners of St. Louis, in about 1858," says Kelsey. "And 10 years later he was president of the United States. And between the wood and the presidency, he saved the Union."
After that, Grant invested badly and died poor. But his memoirs became a bestseller soon after his death.
Marie Kelsey is a librarian by training, and has a doctorate in library information services. She runs the College of St. Scholastica's Educational Media and Technology Program. Kelsey chased the Grant story from library to library, collecting her own expanding list of citations on everything she found.
"Then I found out that Greenwood Press, in West Port, Connecticut, has a series called, 'Bibliographies of the Presidents of the United States,'" says Kelsey. "And nobody had done Grant."
Kelsey's obsession became a nine-year long assignment.
"It was quite an obsession for quite a while," admits Kelsey. "But I've had to move on, and ... other things have kind of taken over, now that I've completed the book that I did on Grant -- the annotated bibliography."
Her annotated bibliography has just been published. It's 520 pages, contains more than 4,000 citations. And it can be yours for $120.
There's nothing like it in print, according to John Simon, history professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association.
"It's something that's been needed in the field for a long time," Simon says. "There have been bibliographies attached to various biographies and other books about Grant. But nobody's actually gone at it systematically until this time. And nobody's put it into print, except Marie Kelsey, who's created an indispensable book."
The experts may be impressed with the book, but what really gets Kelsey's friends is the room in her house.
"They admire it, I think," says Kelsey. "Some people do crafts. I do Grant."
You might think her book is available at bookstores, but it's not. If you'd like your own copy, you'll probably have to place a special order.
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