Ulysses S. Grant IV


Ulysses S. Grant IV was the son of Ulysses S. Grant Jr. and the grandson of General of the Army and President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant and United States Senator Jerome B. Chaffee of Colorado. He was an American geologist and paleontologist known for his work on the fossil mollusks of the California Pacific Coast. He was born at his father's farm, Merryweather Farm, in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to San Diego, California.

Early life and education

Grant studied geology at Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1915. Following graduation he mined for gold in Mexico. During World War I, Grant enlisted in the United States Army as a private. By the end of the war, he was a second lieutenant. From 1919 to 1925 he was connected with the New York Stock Exchange. In 1926, he returned to school and took graduate courses at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1927 he entered the graduate program in paleontology at Stanford University. Grant received his doctorate in 1929.

Career

After he received his doctorate, Grant worked at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County as the curator of invertebrate paleontology. Grant then taught paleontology at the University of California, Los Angeles beginning in 1931. He rose from instructor to chairman of the geology department, a post he held for eight years. He retired in 1959. Grant wrote several papers and often collaborated with Leo George Hertlein, his classmate at Stanford.

Later life and death

In 1953, Grant IV appeared on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life, where the consolation question was usually "Who is buried in Grant's tomb?".
Grant died at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, from lung failure caused by leukemia. Grant is buried at Greenwood Memorial Park alongside his father.

Personal life

His first wife was Matilda Bartikofsky. They were married in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on October 4, 1917, and later divorced. In 1950, he married Frances Dean, who was born circa 1911 in Kentucky and died December 8, 1991, in Honolulu, Hawaii. They had one child named George Grant.
Grant's cousin was Major General Ulysses S. Grant III, the son of Major General Frederick Dent Grant.