Sometimes there are tangents of local history that lead to major events. Take the case of Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln and a bitter rift between their wives that could have affected what happened at Ford’s Theater in Washington at the end of the Civil War.
Grant’s link to Bucks is hands-on. About the time of the war, the U.S. Army general visited his card-playing buddy and wealthy Philadelphia merchant Adolph Borie at his “The Dell” mansion overlooking the Delaware River in Andalusia.
There, Ulysses demonstrated his carpentry prowess by building a log cabin doll house for the neighboring Anderson sisters. As to Lincoln, he was en route to his presidential inauguration in Washington on March 4, 1861, when he made a train stop to address an enthusiastic crowd in Bristol.