2 Quotes & Sayings By Dorothy Osborne

Dorothy Osborne was the wife of President Ulysses S. Grant. She was born in Washington, D.C., on October 6, 1806, the eldest daughter of John Watson and Anne Marie Jones. Her father was a wealthy physician who died when she was about two years old Read more

Her mother worked as a schoolteacher for both her children and her brother, who lived with the family after his parents' deaths. Dorothy had an unhappy childhood, but her brother helped to make things better by taking charge of the household and providing for her education. At age thirteen she moved to Philadelphia where she studied languages and classics at the University of Pennsylvania under William Strickland.

She also met William, Baron de Longueuil, later known as "the French baron." He married her in 1826, when she was nineteen. Dorothy's husband served in the Spanish-American War (1898–1899) and died in Cuba in 1898. After his death, Dorothy returned to Washington where she lived until her death in 1899 at age seventy-four.