He once was dying of cancer and his family was facing serious financial problems. At this point in his life he was a man trying to take care of his family and we get to tell his story here that most people dont know about. Welcome to Saratoga Springs on the tv. Located about four hours north of new york city it has a population of about 27000. Names for the numerous springs in the area early settlers walked here to experience the therapeutic effects of the natural mineral or water. Today Saratoga Springs is a popular Tourist Destination with its spots. Revolutionary war history and. With the help of our spectrum Cable Partners for the next 90 minutes will learn about the citys history and feature its local Literary Community including Andrew Mckenna on his battle with opioid addiction. Growing up i thought the person who is addicted to heroin lived under a bridge somewhere and was pushing a shopping cart around or Something Like that you know, that is not the case. One of the most abused drugs right now on wall street among traders and these are elite professionals are opioids. We begin our special feature with author on the history of Saratoga Springs. We are standing at the spring and it has recreated the portico discovered in 1792. It was found to be beneficial for certain diseases. Id like to say that Congress Park is a city park developed because of constipation. Because that is the disease most likely it was used to treat. It helped to spur a Great Development of hotels, boarding houses and businesses, generally, here in surgical springs. There was nothing here until the first spring was discovered. In fact, we think that the mohawk and muskegon indians came here only for the mineral springs. It was not a place where they cant particularly perhaps they hunted here so perhaps the european americans came here in 1771 and probably finding the spring or dividing land that had been very inappropriately taken from the mohawks. So what happened in the very beginning and 71 and 72 was that the first people to come here build log cabins and anyone who heard of the water made there were here paid a small sum of money to stay in one of these very rough log cabins and they bathed in the spring where they drank it and the this is very dangerous territory so everything stopped for about seven years. Even when it started up it started out slowly. It wasnt until 1802 that [inaudible] came here from connecticut and built the first hotel. Originally called putnam tavern and later it was called william hall and became the grand hotel. The big boost was 1832 when the railroad was built. It came from albany by way of schenectady and immediately a number of people coming here. The next big boom was because all the fortunes made in the war with what is called cloth for the ironing and petroleum which is just beginning to be exploited. Those loved it here and they came in great numbers and thats when the union hall has expanded into the grand union hotel and the United States had burned in 1864 and was rebuilt a decade later in those two hotels for each over 800 and they were immense. They were six or seven stories high right on the sidewalk. In the 1860s and 1870s the very, very wealthy did not build summer homes and they did that later but at first they rented rooms in the two big hotels and sometimes the other larger hotels. At the same time the was taking place racism was getting going. It started in 1847 the state fair but it was primarily [inaudible] for the first three years. In 1863 John Morrissey, prizefighter and gambler, began the racetrack and this was thoroughbred racing and things really took off. They took off quite successfully and the track was set in stone in 1902 when William Collins acquired it with his associates. From 1863 to today the racetrack has been served as the bread and butter because in fact by that time the use of mineral waters was declining. The crowd that came here to stay often for four weeks at a time at the great hotel no longer wanted to do that. They wanted variety and fights and they had automobiles so that started with the very rich and trickledown first of the middle class and ultimately to let say the late 40s. It was progressive but the hotels do not have private baths and in world war ii called a halt to racism because it was impossible to get versus year with the travel restrictions. So they raced in new york city instead of here where they normally would have. The United States hotel was turned down in 1943, 1944 in the middle of the war but the hotel went along 1853 and then it was gone. That was gone and the Largest Hotel in town probably had the roads so it was really a change and then in the early 60s saratoga hands came together and in a grassroots effort pulled together to turn things around in a number of things contributed to it. For one thing the interstate highway was built in albany from 1963 ultimately on the way to montreal. That made traveling here a lot easier. When i came here in 1978 people of my generation had moved in, had bought rundown houses, rundown commercial buildings and everything is happening at once. It was an exciting time here. That was almost 40 years ago in today saratoga is a most remarkably diverse city, economically it is a college town, a resort town, a Light Industrial town and summer of albany and it was really broad. That is part of the success. Its a complete place and we love it here. This is a 4000acre estate located in Saratoga Springs established as a haven for writers and artists. It houses over 200 artists a year which have included 74 Pulitzer Prize winners and a nobel prize winner. With the help of our spectrum Cable Partners we continue to explore the Literary History of Saratoga Springs the memoirs of former president ulysses s grant. When grants arrived at the overlook and here he is. Ill only a few days left before he passes away and seeing this great beauty this valley that one saw conflict and warfare and where our nation was born was now a Peaceful Valley were farmers were working and he must have taken some satisfaction in that he was a part of the Great American story. We are on Mount Mcgregor in upstate new york only a few miles north Saratoga Springs and the significance of this Historic Site is this was the final home of civil war general and president ulysses s grant. This is the place where Ulysses Grant penned his memoirs in 1885. He was dying of cancer and his family was facing serious financial problems and at this point in his life he was a man trying to take care of his family. We get to tell the story here that most people dont know about. After his second term as president Ulysses Grant and his wife julia went on a world tour for two years. From 1879 and he met many World Leaders and was well respected around the world. When they arrived back in the states in 1879 they were looking for a place to settle because they had come out of the white house two years earlier and were granted it was always an easy decision even though they owned multiple properties in the United States the decision for grants because he was always the devoted family man was to be close to family and he chose the location in new york city so the grants moved into a home in the Upper East Side of manhattan and their children lived nearby and they enjoyed a few years you could say out of the limelight and the winners in york city in their new jersey cottage and grants when he arrived back from his world tour was in need of some income which is i had scheduled for most people because he was a president and people wonder why he didnt have a pension of any kind and it turns out he had given up his military pension to take the presidency and at the end of his presidency there was no pension at the time so he was making his own way in the world and spent a lot of money on the world tour in his son ulysses junior, they called him but, born in ohio, the Buckeye State had gone involved in wall Street Investment so he got his father involved in the formed a firm and they named grant and ward. The investments went well for a while. The early 1880s were comfortable times and money was coming into the firm but everything really started to collapse in the final year of grahams life. He ended up having a slip and fall on the icy sidewalk in new york city that put him in bed ridden for a couple weeks and then early in 1884 in the spring of 1884 he arrived at the office of grants awarded and found out that there was a major financial crisis. He had to get a loan from his friend William Vanderbilt for 150,000 to try to keep the firm afloat. He brought this money to his Business PartnerFerdinand Ward had been doing the books the entire time for the firm and thought that maybe this would help the firm survive and in fact, he found out soon after that ward was actually a crook and he had been running essentially a ponzi scheme the entire time and the grants hit the grant family like a bombshell. They were financially devastated because they had invested heavily in the sperm and the whole family had and now they had to find a way to make money. Grant felt personally responsible. It really encouraged his family and others to invest in sperm and even though he was and he felt personally responsible and wanted to pay back his debt. The grants were not built situation because of the financial scandal and they packed up and moved out to the new jersey cottage for the summer of 1884 to essentially figure out what they were going to do with the future rebuild their lives financially. Grant was approached by sentry magazine at this time, a big magazine company, to write some articles. Grant had been pestered to be an author for many years and had always resisted but other people had written about him and he didnt think youd be much of an author and he was very modest man but most of all he didnt need the money either. They knew they had them in a corner because he didnt need the money and they offered him 500 in article, enough to keep the family afloat to pay the basic bills. So grant started writing articles about the civil war in the summer of 1884 at the new jersey cottage. That is when his writing career began and that is when he brought in some money but there would still have to be a larger work of literature out of the debt they were in. I wish grant started his writing for shaky. It was seen as more of a drive military report. The editor even went so far as to remark that essentially it may be the second disaster of shiloh because it was on the battle of shiloh and this may be the second disaster of shiloh so it was a very poorly written article but interestingly enough this editor came down to visit grant at the new jersey cottage and talked with him freely and said to grants would you tell me about the civil war and so grants are talking anecdotes about the civil war and he told grant that is material that people want to read. Grant really came into his own as an author in summer of 1884 by the end of summer he started to have an idea that maybe this writing career can produce money for his family so right around the same time the magazine was ready to make a push to get him to write a larger book that could be sold. The sentry magazine told they would publish it and he ended up starting to work on it as they went back to the new york city home for the winter of 188485. As grant was working on writing the article during the summer of 1884 he ended up starting to have propane. It started with a very bad staying in the back of his throat that he felt as he was eating a peach. He kind of shrugged it off as may be being a wasp or something on the fruit when he ate it but it kind of persisted and kept coming back and he ignored it because his regular doctor was away in europe and he really wanted to see his regular doctor so he ignored it and said he would see his doctor in the fall essentially. They didnt think much of it at the time because he had been a smoker since the civil war of cigars and they called it smoker stroke at the time. He continued on working with his writing career because when they move back to new york city he finally went to the doctor and he ended up going to his regular doctor knew there was a serious problem as soon as he looked at his throat and he sent him to a specialist, doctor john douglas. He went in to doctor Douglas Office and doctor douglas took a look at his throat and grant looked at douglas face and said is a cancer and unfortunately the doctor had to tell him essentially it was. Grant worked on these memoirs throughout the winter of 188485 and towards the spring of 1885 it was really touch and go pick it a couple of neardeath experiences and his doctors believed the only way he would survive long enough to finish his book was to get him out of the city which was human, dusty, hot to a mountaintop environment. They did a lot with ailing people in that time. And they were looking for opportunities and a friend of the family, joseph drexel, approached the doctors and the grant family to offer them the use of cottage that he just purchased on the top of Mount Mcgregor, just above Saratoga Springs. The cottage that mr. Drexel offered to the grants was fairly modest in size but did have six rooms upstairs in a few rooms downstairs and it had been originally a small in built by the first owner of the mountain, duncan mcgregor. It was moved to accommodate the expansion of the resort in the early 1880s and the resort was expanded to the point where there was 100 room hotel called the bell moral just above the cottage and property was turned into a big victorian wilderness resort you could call it out in top wilderness resort with wonderful overlooks pathways and obviously wonderful air and there was one advertisement for the hotel that said if you dont cure your hayfever its free so mountain air was seen as curative at the time. When grant and his party left new york city on the morning of june 16, 1985 grant was in Poor Condition in the day he arrived it was incredibly hot on the strip appear and difficult. Although once he got off the train and came up to the cottage he immediately got changed, came back out on the porch and in the mountain air and the clear of the mountain seem to revive him seem to have good effect on him right away. Most importantly, he was able to be with his entire family at the cottage. He will head into grants bedroom and this is where grant wouldve come in from the outside and one thing youll notice that is missing here is a bed. Normally there is a bed in the bedroom but unfortunately because of grants condition his throat condition he ended up having to sleep sitting up so he would have his feet in one side and sitting up in the other and this is where he worked on the memoirs when the bugs chased him and or the heat and this is where his nurses or his doctors which he had three doctors on call into nurses who would administer any medicine or try to give him nourishment it was very hard for him to eat with his throat condition so most of these items you see our original but they were provided for the grant family by mr. Drexel. These two chairs however came up from new york city with the grants and grants wrote in these up from new york city on the train. Now because mr. Drexel left these to become a memorial grants son actually left his fathers personal belongings here and we have some very personal items here. And that show that grant was here and that he was at home here and that he went through some very tough times here as well because we have his food bowl in his spittoon and hair brushes, toothbrushes, dockings, his clothing here and we also have food equipment that he was trying to get nourishment and its very difficult but what is really interesting item we have in this room is grants original original medicine the original liquid and substance and most people guess that what they were using for medication is Something Like morphine or some heavy sedative like that the only problem was that grant couldnt take medicine like that because it was too powerful and he wouldnt be able to concentrate on working on his book so the doctors settled on a fairly new substance of the time, a little controversial, it was cocaine. What you see in the bottle is cocaine and they would stir that up and they would apply it on his throat topically to give him pain relief so he could keep concentrated on the work of finishing his book for the sake of his family. When grant arrived you can imagine that he was internationally famous so the train car behind his family string hard was the press corps. When they found out that grant was dying in march of 1885 they kept up a 24 hour vigil. They followed him up to the mountain here and camped out across the cottage intends and they would run up to the hotel and send telegraph wires down to new york city. They also opened the Hotel Balmoral and normally it didnt open until july 1st but they opened it when the grants arrived june 16 so there was a lot of activity appear people new grants here. He was in the papers every day. He was expected to say. For secret service the only person that volunteered was a Civil War Veteran about the same ages grant sam willett, local Civil War Veteran and he volunteered and they pretense up for him on the cottage then he ended up being grants bodyguard. He stood at the bottom of the stairs and