LONG BRANCH – It looks, at this point, like something the sea upchucked amid all the high end Spanish-style stucco residences, but the Church of the Presidents (otherwise known as St. James Episcopal Chapel) once played host to the following presidential worshippers:

Ulysses S. Grant

Rutherford B. Hayes

James Garfield

Chester Arthur

Benjamin Harrison

William McKinley

and

Woodrow Wilson.

The Stetson House and West End were two hotels that stood on the shore here in Long Branch, too.

Grant summered in the Stetson in 1869. It was the first summer of his presidency (1869-1877), and apparently he chose Long Branch over Cape May.

Seeing the plaques on Tuesday with references to Grant reminds InsiderNJ of something Mark Twain wrote about him after the death of the Civil War general and 18th U.S. President. Twain reflected on Grant’s final 1885 efforts to complete his personal memoirs, which he would publish as a posthumous two-volume set.

From Twain:

“And his fortitude! He was under sentence of death last Spring. He sat thinking, musing, for several days, nobody knows what about, then he pulled himself together and set out to finish that book, a colossal task for a dying man. Presently his hand gave out. Fate seemed to have got him checkmated. Dictation was suggested. No, he could never do that, had never tried it, too old to learn now. By and by – if he could do Appomattox – well… So he sent for a stenographer and dictated 9,000 words at a single sitting! – Never pausing, never hesitating for a word, never repeating – and in the written-out copy, hardly a correction. Then I enlarged the book – had to. Then he lost his voice. But he was not quite done, however. There was no end of little plums and spices to be stuck in here and there. And this work he patiently continued a few lines a day , with his pad and pencil till far into July, at Mt. McGregor. One day he put his pencil aside and said he was done – there was nothing more to do. If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that struck the world three days later.”