Frank Grant’s Grave Marked With Headstone
From Derek Gentile at The Berkshire Eagle on May 25, with mentions of SABR members Jeremy Krock, James Overmyer and Stew Thornley:
Local Baseball Hall of Famer Ulysses “Frank” Grant, long interred in an unmarked grave in New Jersey, has finally been recognized with a headstone.
The stone was paid for by the non-profit Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, which locates the final resting places of former Negro League players and arranges for a headstone for them.
According to NLBGMP president Jeremy Krock, the organization has raised money and placed headstones on the unmarked graves of more than 20 Negro League players since 2004. The organization has located 13 more gravesites and is seeking funds to cover the cost of stones for those men.
Lacking access to pensions available to current big-leaguers, many former Negro League players died penniless or in anonymity. Krock’s organization researches their whereabouts and plants headstones as a way to honor the players.
Grant is considered the best Negro League player of the 19th century. He was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
Although Grant’s grave was not marked, baseball historians always knew where he was interred, according to James Overmyer of Lenox, a local Negro League historian and consultant to the Hall of Fame. Grant’s burial site, located in section 14 of the East Ridgelawn Cemetery in Clifton, N.J. is listed in the Baseball Hall of Fame Gravesites website created by baseball historian Stew Thornley.
Read the full article here: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/sports/ci_18132926
For more information on the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, visit their website here.
Originally published: May 25, 2011. Last Updated: May 25, 2011.