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Something Old, Something New: Nellie Grant

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    The Wedding at the White House

    Date: June 6, 1874

    Creator: Henry Alexander Ogden

    Medium: Hand colored wooden engraving

    Henry Ogden captured Nellie Grant’s marriage to Algernon Sartoris in this wood engraving for the June 6, 1874 issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Every entrance to the grounds of the Executive Mansion was guarded and passage only possible with an invitation from the couple. Although the grounds were generally more public in the nineteenth century, the Boston Daily Globe noted that security had to be employed for the event or the “Executive Mansion would have been literally besieged."

    White House Historical Association

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    Nellie Grant Wedding Special, The Daily Graphic

    Date: May 23, 1874

    Medium: Newspaper

    This engraving depicts the Grant-Sartoris wedding party: the mother of the bride, Julia Grant, the best man and Nellie’s older brother, Frederick Grant, and Nellie’s eight bridesmaids, who were all from affluent families. The bridesmaids wore lustrous white silk gowns with tulle overlaying them in a pleated ruffle fashion and a pouf in the back of the skirts, as bustles and trim at the center back of skirts were in vogue. Four of the ladies were decorated with blue flowers and the other four with rose-pink flowers. In the English tradition, Algernon did not have any groomsmen besides his best man, Frederick.

    NewsBank/Readex

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    Nellie Grant Wedding Special, The Daily Graphic

    Date: May 23, 1874

    Medium: Newspaper

    As their only daughter, President Grant and First Lady Julia Grant indulged in wedding gifts and a trousseau for Nellie to take to England–a “wardrobe befitting a princess.” The trousseau created for Nellie was reportedly stocked with around one hundred dresses of the handsomest fabrics and fineries so that she would not have to rely on her husband to purchase new dresses so soon after the marriage. Evening dresses, street suits, morning wear, outdoor wear, and lingerie of all sorts fabulously embellished filled the trousseau that supposedly rivaled Queen Elizabeth I’s collection.

    NewsBank/Readex

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    Nellie Grant Wedding Special, The Daily Graphic

    Date: May 23, 1874

    Medium: Newspaper

    Eighteen-year-old Nellie wore a wedding gown of the finest white satin and point lace. The satin around the bottom of the skirt was box-pleated and had satin bows in between the pleats. Tulle ruching and rare point lace flounces adorned both the skirt and the neckline and orange blossoms were arranged across the layers of expensive fabrics. When ordering the handmade point lace from Brussels for Nellie’s gown, President Grant requested that it be the “most superb the manufactury could produce.” The bride wore a locket necklace and earrings made of pearls and diamonds, a tulle veil, and long white gloves to complete the look.

    NewsBank/Readex

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    Nellie Grant Wedding Special, The Daily Graphic

    Date: May 23, 1874

    Medium: Newspaper

    Two of the scenes published in The Daily Graphic depicted the bridal party train departing to New York City after the wedding and the interior of the special Pullman palace car. The Pullman car, which was originally built for the 1873 World’s Fair in Vienna, was specially refurbished to take the fashionable bridal party to New York after the wedding and was reported to have cost approximately $22,000. Nellie wore the traveling dress from her wedding trousseau on the journey to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City: an olive brown skirt, a light brown long cutaway coat with embroidery, a dark straw hat, and matching brown gloves.

    NewsBank/Readex

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About this Gallery

Ellen “Nellie” Wrenshall Grant, only daughter of President Ulysses S. Grant and First Lady Julia Dent Grant, married Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris, an English singer, on May 21, 1874.