ST. LOUIS • The bride's veil was adorned in jasmine blooms as she strode downstairs to the parlor, where her young Army officer waited. A lone fiddler provided music. Refreshments were on a table in the back room.

The Rev. John H. Linn married Julia Dent and Lt. Ulysses S. Grant in her family's city residence, 701 South Fourth Street, on a hot Aug. 22, 1848. The wedding rated three lines in the newspaper. Julia's father was a successful if not aristocratic farmer in St. Louis County. Grant, 26, was freshly back from courageous service in the Mexican War.

Fame and sad irony would come later — one of their groomsmen was fellow officer James Longstreet, a cousin of Julia. Sixteen years later, Grant led the Union army, and Longstreet was one of the Confederacy's wiliest generals. The old friends faced each other in Grant's series of bloody hammer blows across Virginia, a campaign that finally decided the Civil War.

But in 1848, the tale was of a touching romance that would endure for 36 years. By all accounts, Ulysses and Julia loved each other to his death in 1885. If he couldn't thrive as a farmer, businessman or president, he was a success as a husband and father.

Julia's father, Col. Frederick Dent, owned slaves and 925 acres along Gravois Creek, 10 miles southwest of the city. Grant had roomed at West Point with her brother and was assigned in 1843 to Jefferson Barracks. It was five miles from the Dent family home, called White Haven.

Grant and Longstreet rode there to warm welcomes. Grant noticed Julia, four years his junior, who was witty and his equal in equestrianship. They often rode the land now called Affton. In 1844, he gave her his West Point ring to seal their engagement.

Then he was off to Mexico, where he missed her dearly. And where his superiors noticed calm resolve under fire.

After his years on duty in California, where loneliness sometimes led to liquor, Col. Dent gave them an 80-acre farm on today's Rock Hill Road. Grant built his famous cabin there.

He and his wife were living in Galena, Ill., where his father had a tannery, when civil war began. Four years later, the general in a rumpled jacket was a national hero.

The wedding home on Fourth Street was demolished in 1943. The site is now a parking lot near Busch Stadium. The cabin, featured at the 1904 World's Fair, is a must-see at Grant's Farm, the Busch family estate. White Haven next door is a national historic site.

The remains of Grant and his wife are entombed in Riverside Park in New York City.

A monument in St. Paul Cemetery on South Rock Hill Road marks where Grant tried to be a farmer. Few know it's there.

Read more stories from Tim O'Neil's Look Back series.