Francis Grover Cleveland

Francis Grover Cleveland (July 18, 1903 – November 8, 1995) was an American stage actor, director, producer, and politician. Born in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, he was the son of Grover Cleveland, who served as the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, and First Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland. He had a brother, Richard, and three sisters: Ruth, Marion, and Esther. Because his father was 66 years old at the time of his birth, Cleveland was alive a century after Grover Cleveland first took office. In a 1987 interview, he noted that he had never visited the White House.

Cleveland was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and attended Harvard College without graduating. He went on to work as a stage actor in New York City for seven years, appearing on Broadway between 1934 and 1939. His Broadway credits include Tide Rising, Brown Danube, The Night Remembers, Dead End by Sidney Kingsley, and the Thornton Wilder drama Our Town, in which he played the role of Sam Craig.

Alongside his wife Alice and producer Edward P. Goodnow, Cleveland co-founded The Barnstormers Theatre in Tamworth, New Hampshire, in 1931. The company began by performing in a barn behind the Tamworth Inn and in surrounding communities. In 1935, his mother purchased a store in Tamworth, and the following year the group began staging productions in a theater built at the rear of that building, which served as their home stage for the rest of Cleveland's life. He directed productions for the company and selected its repertoire, which he estimated had exceeded 400 plays by 1993.

Cleveland married Alice Erdman in 1925, and the couple settled in Tamworth. They had a daughter, Marion C. Cohen, who lived in Baltimore. Alice Cleveland predeceased her husband in 1992. Beyond the theater, Cleveland entered local politics, winning election to the Tamworth board of selectmen in 1950 as a Republican and serving in that role until 1962. In 1989, Plymouth State College honored him with a Granite State Award for significant contributions to New Hampshire. In his later years he was affected by a degenerative eye disease and was legally blind by 1993. He died on November 8, 1995, in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, at the age of 92, the last surviving child of President Grover Cleveland.