June 16 Tuesday – General Grant left New York City a little after 8 AM and took a five-hour train ride to Saratoga, New York. From there he boarded a smaller-gauge train for the final twelve miles to Mt. McGregor, where a welcoming committee waited. It had been the doctor’s recommendation that Grant spend time in the Adirondacks, where the air was clean and much cooler than New York in the summer. Grant had to be carried the last distance up a steep hill to a cottage where he would stay [Perry 206-8]. Sam would travel to Mt McGregor on June 30.

Sam and Livy went to “Armsmear,”  the Colt Mansion for a dinner with Mrs. Elizabeth H. Jarvis Colt. From Livy’s diary:

This evening we dined at Mrs. Colts to meet some southern friends of hers. There were twelve of us at the table, a delightful time we had and the decorations were beautiful—Such superb masses of roses. About half past eight or nine other guests began to arrive and I should think there might have been two hundred there. A charming last evening in Hartford, seeing so many friends that I was glad to say good bye to. A band and fire works in the grounds as we sat about in the drawing room and on the porches. It has been an excessively hot day [Salsbury 202].