William James Grahame was born on July 22, 1884, in Owosso, MI, to Stanley and Martha “Maggie” (Kelley) Grahame. His father died in 1889. By age 16 in 1900, he was working as a brickyard hand in Owosso. He was described as tall, 6 feet tall, and slender with brown hair and blue eyes. Bill Grahame married Mathilde “Tillie” May Haynes in 1905 in Owosso. The couple had two children Margaret, born in 1907, and Vera, born in 1910. Grahame’s notoriety comes from his years as a professional baseball player in the minor and major leagues. Seven seasons in total.

He started at age 22 in 1906 as pitcher for the minor league Central League Grand Rapids Wolverines. There, he played in 7 games, with 17 at bats, 2 hits allowed, BA was .118, SLG (slugging percentage) was .118, and TB was 2. By 1907, he moved to Shreveport, Louisiana to play in the Southern Association minor league Shreveport Pirates team as a pitcher. He played in 34 games with a record of 15-19.

Bill played in the American League for the St. Louis Browns for three seasons, 1908, 1909, and 1910. He was a left-handed pitcher for the Browns. The Browns are the ancestral team of the Baltimore Orioles, the change to which came in 1953. Grahame played in Sportsman’s Park with the Browns, only the third concrete and steel park of major league baseball which was brand new in 1909.

Grahame’s time on the team was contemporary with famous pitcher Barney Pelty, known as the “Yiddish Curver.” Pelty is among the best career pitchers in Browns-Orioles franchise history with the record in batters hit by pitch and in the top ten in other categories including complete games and shutouts. Due to this, he was likely a backup or relief pitcher. In Grahame’s three seasons in the major leagues he played 64 games, made 126 plate appearances and 118 at bats. His batting average was .144. Throughout his three years with the Browns he pitched 117.1 innings in 1908, 187.1 innings in 1909, and 43 innings in 1910. He left mid-season in 1910 for a return to the minor league.

He moved on to play with the Chattanooga Lookouts from the Southern Association. He played 31 games with the team. The last team he played for was the Rome Romans in Rome, Georgia of the minor league Appalachian League. There he played 7 games with a .625 win-loss percentage. He pitched 70 innings with the Romans.

By 1917, William was working in assembly at REO Motors in Lansing.

In 1919, William and Tillie moved to Holt, where they lived in North Holt on North Mt. Hope Road. That is not the Mount Hope we know today in Lansing. The location of the Grahames’ 1.5 acres was on modern day Aurelius Road, around the present location of the Cricket Ridge Apartments. What we today know as Aurelius Road has had different names over the years. Maps from this period list it as West Road (because it was West of downtown Holt), up in Lansing it was sometimes called the Holt Road (because it’s the road heading into Holt). That is often how roads were named, based on what town led to.

In this period, Holt really began to suburbanize for the first time. Neighborhoods like Holt Farms and Sterling Farms were being developed. This was spurred in part by the Interurban railway, on which Holt was a stop along the line from Lansing to Mason. This allowed workers to live further out of the city in smaller communities like Holt and take the Interurban into work in Lansing. With REO Motors being on Lansing’s southside, many REO workers lived in the expanding South Lansing of the period and even into Holt and utilized the Interurban.

He continued working for REO Motors and for a period also worked as an electrician at Inter State Electric. These jobs differed greatly from his time in professional sport, but they provided a steady income and reliable job in a small town setting to provide for his family. William died in Holt on February 15, 1936. Tillie remarried following Bill’s death to Harry Bohls. She died in 1947. The couple, who moved across the country to pursue professional baseball, are laid to rest side by side here in Maple Ridge Cemetery in the town the called home for nearly two decades.

William and Tillie’s youngest daughter Vera married Jack Drumm in Holt in 1929. She later married Arleigh G. Covell, with whom she lived in Denver, Colorado.

William and Tillie’s eldest daughter Margaret married a Holt boy, Harry Nuoffer. Son of Edwin and Ethel Nuoffer of Holt, Harry was a veteran of WWII. Harry and Margaret were married in 1943 and resided on Park Lane in Holt. Margaret was a working woman, employed by the State Health Department Records Division for 25 years. Following Margaret’s death in 1952, Harry remarried to Ruth. Harry and Ruth had a family of their own, including several children and grandchildren. Harry died a resident of Holt in 1968. There are two markers for Harry in Maple Ridge Cemetery, one with Margaret and her parents, and a second alongside Ruth. As a result, no death date is engraved in his marker with Margaret and his WWII service marker is on his grave alongside Ruth.