The Grant's Tomb was built with a fund raised by the Grand Monument Association. There were 90,000 contributors, and the fund with accrued interest aggregated $600,000. The cornerstone was laid by President I harrison, April 27, 1892. Sealed in it were copies of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States and Articles of Con-federation; a Bible, the "Memoirs of General Grant," an American flag, badges of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Loyal Legion, and eleven medals struck in United States mints in commemoration of events in Grant's life.

On April 27, 1897, the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth, the Grant's Tomb monument was dedicated with imposing ceremonies, a military, naval and civic parade in which 50,000 men were in line, an address by President McKinley, and an oration by Gen. Horace Porter, President of the Grant Monument Association.

Among the earliest contributors to the monument fund had been the Chinese statesman, Li Hung Chang, between whom and Grant a friend-ship had existed since their meeting in China during the General's trip around the world. Each year after Grant's death Li I-lung Chang had sent to the Chinese Minister at Washington a wreath to be placed at the temporary tomb.

When Li was in the United States in 1896 he visited the tomb and laid upon the sarcophagus a wreath of smilax, laurel and orchids. The following year he sent a gingko tree, to be planted here; it is on the north side of the Tomb, and the bronze tablet records in Chinese and English texts:*
This tree is planted at the side of the tomb of General U. S. Grant, ex-President of the United States of America, for the purpose of commemorating his greatness, by Li Hung Chang, Guardian of the Prince, Grand Secretary of State, Earl of the First Order Yang Hu, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of China, Vice-President of the Board of Censors. wang Hsu, 23rd year, 4th moon, May, 1897.

Near Grant's Tomb, on the edge of the bluff, is a little monument marking the grave of "an amiable child." The inscriptions have been blurred by the passing of a hundred years, but we may read them still:
Erected to the memory of an amiable child, St. Claire Pollock, died 15 July, 1797, in the 5 year of his age.

Man that is born of a woman is of few years and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow and continued not.
At the time referred to this was called Strawberry Hill, and here was the country home of George Pollock, a New York merchant. Shortly
"With the gingko or maiden hair (Salisburio adiantifolia) was planted as a companion tree a Chinese cork tree (I'hellodendron aniurense).
 
Thereafter Mr. Pollock failed in business, was forced to sell his Straw-berry Hill property, and went to England. In a letter which he wrote thence to Mrs. Gulian C. Verplanck, under date of Jan. 18, 1800, we have this record of the child's grave :
There is a small enclosure near your boundary fence within which lie the remains of a favorite child, covered by a marble monument.

The surrounding ground will fall into the hands of I know not whom, whose prejudice or better taste may remove the monument and lay the enclosure open. You will confer a peculiar and interesting favor upon me by allowing me to convey the enclosure to you, so that you will consider it a part of your own estate, keeping it, however, always enclosed and sacred. There is a white marble funeral urn prepared to place on the monument which will not lessen its beauty. I have long considered those grounds as of my own creation, having selected them when wild, and brought the place to its present form. Having so long and so delightfully resided there, I feel an interest in it that I cannot get rid of but with time.

It is an extremely curious and interesting circumstance that the little grave, which thus in 1800 was the subject of a father's solicitude, should have endured through the vicissitudes of a hundred years, and been pre-served amid the changes which have converted the remote country seat of Strawberry Hill into the Riverside Park of today—the spot of isolated seclusion into a place of thronging thousands. More suggestive still is that chance of time which has brought into juxtaposition here on River-side Drive the magnificent Tomb of the great General—a nation's shrine, and the humble grave of "an amiable child," who died more than a century ago "in the 5 year of his age."

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