Edward Mark Grant was born in Ithaca, New York on June 26, 1867. His father, Ed Grant Sr., was killed in a train wreck 6 months later at Angola, New York. His mother, Fannie Spillman Grant, then returned to her home of Rome, Georgia where Ed Grant was raised. He came to Morristown around 1886 and was an active local merchant. At one time he ran a hardware business in Morristown. Around 1900 he started the Morristown Bank and Trust Company and was its president until it was purchased by Hamilton Associates in the early 1930's, and this was the precursor of the Hamilton Bank.
Ed Grant's widowed mother, Fannie, married Rev. Rufus Morgan Hickey a Methodist, who was known as a great speaker and revivalist. Rev. Hickey suffered persecution as a Southern Methodist minister after the close of the War Between the States, and, we are told, endured it with great courage. (Apparently people threatened to burn down the churches he preached in, going so far as to pile wood against the buildings.) They had at least two children together: a boy, Judge William Newton Hickey who died in a Knoxville hospital in 1953, and a girl, Miss Mary Susan Hickey, a long time Morristown teacher who taught at Rose School and who died in 1961. Rev. Hickey died in Morristown in 1902, Fannie Hickey having died in 1892.
Ed Grant married Margaret Turley (b. 1869 / d. June 9, 1945) of Morristown. Her father was Col. William H. Turley of McMillian's Station in Knox County, and her mother was Mary Ann McFarland who was a sister of another Morristown mayor, William McFarland. They had two children: Jessie Grant George who died in 1919, and Mrs. Gladys Grant Harris.
According to one source, Grant was elected mayor four times, 1903-1905, 1905-1906, 1911-1912 and 1913-1914.
Ed Grant died February 26, 1959.