GEORGE FRANKLIN
GRANT (1846-1910)
Inventor
Patent Drawing for George Grant's Golf Tee
Courtesy of: United States Patent and Trademark Office
George Franklin Grant, a member of the 1870 class
at Harvard University Dental School, became a noted
inventor both in his professional life and in his
recreational life. He developed and patented both
a rubber oblate palate to treat cleft palates and
the world's first golf tee. Both inventions
brought him national and international renown. After
serving on the Harvard Dental School faculty (1874-89),
Grant earned his livelihood as a dentist with an elite
Boston private practice. He never marketed his golfing
innovation, but gave the tees away to friends.
Grant was one of seven children born to Tudor Elandor
Grant and Phillis Pitt Grant in Oswego, New York,
where he attended integrated public schools. At sixteen
he began to work with an Oswego dentist first as an
errand boy then as a student of dentistry. With Dr.
Smith, Grant learned “to make with his own hands
the plates and teeth to be used.” In 1867, he
left Oswego for Boston where he worked in dental labs
before entering the second Harvard Dental School class
in 1868. He married twice, first to Georgiana H. Smith,
and after her death to Frances E. Bailey. He had four
daughters. Tennis and golf were his favorite leisure
pastimes. He had a summer home in Chester, New Hampshire.
Dr. Grant died of liver cancer in 1910. |
