Biography

John Mason Grant was born in Litchfield to Charles Grant and Hannah McNeil Grant. He attended the Litchfield Female Academy in 1830 and 1831. He graduated from Yale University in 1839 and was the secretary of his class. He then attended the Yale Divinity School from 1840 through 1843, when he moved to New York and spent his last year of theological study at Union Theological Seminary. He was not ordained. He spent several years in and around New York City holding various jobs including teaching, chain-making, and assisting his brother Charles William Grant in dentistry. He also taught school children in various places in Virginia. From 1849 to 1853 he worked as a colporteur for the Maryland Tract Society. After several more years of teaching in the area, he settled in Baltimore in 1856 and worked as an agent for the sale of religious periodicals. In 1865 he was appointed as Assistant Assessor of Internal Revenue. He also worked as a book agent during this time. The last part of his life was spent in Florida, where he died, unmarried, in 1878.

Citation:

Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale College Deceased from June, 1870 to June 1880, by Yale College, 1880, New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse, & Taylor. The Grant Family: A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Matthew Grant of Windsor, Conn. - 1601-1898 by Arthur Hastings Grant, 1898, Poughkeepsie, New York: Press of A. V. Haight.

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