Frederick W. Grigg

Rank: Corporal, U.S. Army

Unit: Company E, 113th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division

Entered service from: New Jersey

Died: October 12, 1918

Buried at: Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, Plot G, Row 26, Grave 30, Romagne, France

Corporal Frederick W. Grigg was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 17, 1897 to William Erie and Mary Butler Grigg. His father was an insurance agent. The family soon moved to Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, where they resided when the Census was taken in 1900. They had moved to 46 West Chestnut Avenue in Merchantville, NJ by the summer of 1910. Frederick Grigg was the tenth of the eleven Grigg children, coming after Leora, Florence, Cora, R. Horace, Walter, Robert, Ernest, Marion, and Arthur Grigg, and before Thomas. All but Cora and Thomas lived to majority. After moving to New Jersey, the Griggs were members of the First Presbyterian Church of Merchantville.

After joining the United States Army at the age of 16 in 1915, he first saw service with Battery B, 1st New Jersey Field Artillery, on the border during the armed intervention with Mexico in 1916. When the battery returned to Camden he was mustered out of service. He was working in Trenton when America entered the Great War and enlisted in the Second New Jersey National Guard and was first placed on guard duty in the state. Later he was sent to Camp McClellan, Anniston, Alabama, and sailed for France in June 1918. When sent overseas, Corporal Grigg was a member of Company E, 113th Infantry Regiment.

Corporal Frederick Grigg was killed in the Argonne Forest and Meuse drive in October, 1918. He was struck in the stomach by a fragment of shrapnel. He was buried at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in Romagne, France.

The Grigg family had left Merchantville by 1920. William and Mary Grigg had moved to Glendale, California by 1926, and were living at 2245 North Louise Street in Glendale by 1930. Mary Grigg was offered the opportunity to take part in the 1930 Mother’s Pilgrimage to France, but declined the offer. Mary Grigg passed in January of 1941, William the following year.

In the years following World War I, veterans in the town of Merchantville organized an American Legion Post, which is still active in 2009. The Frederick W. Grigg Post 68 of the American Legion meets on the second Wednesday of each month at the Merchantville Community Center.