Ballplayers in the Family

Carter H. Harrison IV of Chicago

Baseball has become a recurring family history theme. Collateral relative Carter H. Harrison IV (family reference 33313), first native-born mayor of Chicago, participated in an early example: “The two blocks east of us [on Chicago’s then-pastoral West Side] were vacant prairie. These blocks in summertime served as cow-pastures, except… when a baseball game was played by the better known nines of the city.” Young Carter recalled a game in 1868, ‘the Excelsiors and the Eurekas?” at which he was engaged to pass out lemonade and chase foul balls.¹

William L. Grayson Stadium – Savannah, Georgia

Our great-grandfather William L. Grayson, a prominent man in Georgia political circles, helped obtain federal funding to rebuild Savannah’s Municipal Stadium after a 1940 hurricane. It was renamed in William’s honor, has hosted baseball legends including Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron, and presently serves as the home base for the popular barnstorming Savannah Bananas baseball organization.

Leon and Mary Grayson

Our grandfather Leon Grayson, doubtless through his influential father, moved to Washington, D.C. in 1935 to take a job with FDR‘s Justice Department. In a July 8 letter to his wife Mary, soon to join him, Leon wrote, “Went to the ballgame, saw Lou Gehrig the New York home run king knock a homer with the bases full.” It was the 18th of Gehrig’s record 23 career grand slams.

Ann Grayson

Leon and Mary’s then-17 year old baseball-playing daughter Ann saved a program from a 1960 Washington Senators game. She scored the contest, which featured a Harmon Killebrew home run.

By 1975 Ann had taught me, her Little League son, how to score a game. I passed along the art to my two sons when I coached their youth teams in the 2000s. We remain avid baseball fans, and have attended more than 150 games at a collective 25 major league and a similar number of minor league parks over the years. We each have our favorite players, and precious memories from particular games. I was thus gratified to recently discover two professional baseball connections in the family.

The Carters of Oatlands

We have gotten to know Elizabeth Grayson Carter 114 of Oatlands (1796-1885) and her extended Loudoun County, Virginia family through her Civil War-era household diary (1860-1872). Elizabeth’s oldest son George 1142 and his wife Kate Powell Carter had four children, all born at Oatlands. “Georgie” (b. 1865) and “Gracie” (b. 1867) are mentioned a number of times in Elizabeth’s diary. Mary Custis Carter was born post-diary in 1875; Conrad Powell Carter 11424, their youngest, was born in May 1879.

Conrad Powell Carter, Pitcher

Despite the steady decline in fortune for the Carters after the Civil War, Conrad P. “Nick” Carter received an upper-class education. He attended and played baseball for Phillips Exeter Academy, then returned to attend the University of Virginia (UVA), where he pitched for and captained the baseball team.

Nick, a 5′ 8″ righthander, left college to play professional baseball. He shone with the Syracuse Stars of the New York State League, winning 21 games in 1905. Nothing came of a claim that Nick had signed with the 1907 American League (AL) Washington Senators,² but he did make the big leagues the following year. From an anecdote recorded in 1937:

“In one thirteen inning game [in 1907] Carter while with Syracuse had the unusual record of having only forty men face him. In the first twelve innings the batsmen went down one, two, three, and in the thirteenth the fourth man went to bat. It was then that Connie Mack purchased him for the Athletics.”³

The legendary Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics of the AL for fifty years. Nick’s new teammates included future Hall-of-Famers Frank ‘Home Run” Baker, Charles “Chief” Bender, Eddie Collins, Jimmy Collins, and “Gettysburg Eddie” Plank. Nick pitched in 14 games in 1908, then bounced around lower-level professional and semi-pro leagues until 1913, briefly returning to Loudoun County. In 1916 Nick and his new bride Elizabeth Hopkins purchased a farm in Queenstown in Queen Anne’s County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where both lived out their lives.

Nick was a farmer, a builder, an officer in the local farm bureau, a deputy forest warden, and a vestryman in the Episcopal Church. He died childless in 1961 at age 82 in Grasonville, Maryland, living long enough to witness the completion of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the beach-bound automobile traffic it brought to Queen Anne’s County. In the dozens of times we have passed through, I wondered what connection Grasonville might have to our Grayson family. Though its namesake 19th century Maryland governor is not a relative, we can certainly claim its respected citizen Conrad “Nick” Carter as family.

The Graysons of Salubria

In addition to Civil War-era diary entries about her two sons and their young children, Nick Carter’s grandmother Elizabeth Grayson Carter also mentioned 16 Grayson nephews and nieces. Among these was John Cooke Grayson 1113 of Salubria in Culpeper County, Virginia, located some 50 miles south of Oatlands. J.C. Grayson married war widow Lena Pettus Walton in 1868, adopting her three Walton children. Daughter Willie Alice Walton (b. 1860) of Salubria married successful banker Eppa Rixey of the nearby town of Culpeper in 1882. The couple had six children. Their fourth, born in 1891, was named Eppa Rixey, Jr.

Eppa Rixey, Jr., Chemist and Ball Player

A few years after his step-cousin and fellow Episcopalian Nick Carter, Eppa Jr. attended UVA in Charlottesville, where the 6’5″, 200 lb. lefthander played basketball, tennis, and baseball. Eppa was signed by the National League (NL) Philadelphia Phillies directly out of college, never playing a day in the minor leagues. Few could then make that claim, though Nick Carter’s teammate Eddie Plank was one who could. Eppa made his professional debut in 1912, with his team claiming the NL pennant and he participating in his only World Series in 1915. Eppa won 22 games in 1916, by then having earned masters degrees in Latin and Chemistry. He wrote poetry and taught high school Latin in the offseason, but his 1917 draft registration listed his occupation as “Chemist and Ball Player.” Eppa served as a U.S. Army Chemical Warfare officer in Europe while sitting out the 1918 season. At age 29 Eppa was traded to the NL Cincinnati Reds, leading the league in wins in 1922 and winning 100 games in his first five years on a perennially poor ballclub. His 266 career wins was a league record for a lefty for more than 25 years. When it was surpassed by Warren Spahn in 1959, Eppa quipped, “I’m very glad Spahn broke it. If he hadn’t, no one would have known I’d set it.”

The Glory of Their Times

When baseball legend Ty Cobb died in 1961, historian Lawrence Ritter was inspired to interview as many of the still-living early 20th century ball players as he could find. The result of his efforts was The Glory of Their Times, published in 1966 and still considered among the greatest baseball books ever written. Pitcher Rube Bressler was one of his interviewees.

“There are two kinds of pitchers,” Bressler reminisced. “power pitchers like Dazzy [Vance], Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller – and manipulators – like Eddie Plank, Herb Pennock, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Eppa Rixey. The power pitchers overpower you… but the manipulators, oh brother! Rixey got behind a hitter deliberately, so he could throw him the change of pace. I roomed with Rixey six years at Cincinnati. ‘How dumb can the hitters in this league get?’ Rixey used to ask me. ‘I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. When they’re batting with the count two balls and no strikes, or three and one, they’re always looking for the fastball. And they never get it. They get the change of pace every time – and they’re always just as surprised to see it as the last time.'” (pg. 208) Long time NL catcher Bob O’Farrell named Eppa Rixey in a list of ten players he considered among the best of all time. (pg. 256)

“Jephtha” Rixey – Hall of Fame Pitcher

Eppa “Jephtha” Rixey was given his biblical nickname by a Cincinnati sportswriter. It stuck. He married Cincinnati native Dorothy Meyers in 1924, joined her father’s insurance company, and had two children. Eppa Rixey was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame on January 27, 1963. He was the first Virginian so honored. Upon being advised of his election Rixey replied, “They’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren’t they?” More seriously, he reflected, “It’s funny, you know. I never had any idea of a Hall of Fame when I started playing with the Culpeper Hurricanes back in Virginia. I was seven years old then.” Eppa did not live to travel to Cooperstown and accept the honor, dying of a heart attack in Cincinnati on February 28, 1963. He was 71, and lauded as one of the greatest ever.

¹ Harrison, Carter H., Stormy Years: The Autobiography of Carter H. Harrison, Five Times Mayor of Chicago, © 1935, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis

² “Nick Carter With Senators,” Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, 21 Nov 1906, pg. 12

³ “This Week’s Old Timer,” Queen Anne’s Record-Observer (Centreville, MD) 21 Oct 1937, pg. 8

Eppa Rixey quotes from his 1963 AP obituary and Finkel, Jan, “Eppa Rixey” Society for American Baseball Research, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/eppa-rixey/ accessed 16 Jul 2025.