While shopping in the US recently I picked up a box of one of my favourite cereals, Cream of Wheat. I love the farine variety which I only seem to get in the Caribbean and it made me wonder who the face on the cover was.
Online I discovered that his name was Frank L White. He was born in Barbados in 1869 and immigrated to the US in 1875 and became a citizen in 1890.
From findagrave.com I read this:
“White had been photographed in a Chicago restaurant while working there as a chef in the late 1800’s, however his name was never recorded, and it is doubtful that he ever received any compensation for the photograph.
Not many details about his life are known except that he traveled a lot and spent the final twenty years of his life in Leslie, Michigan with no one but the small town’s 2,000 citizen’s knowing about his famous likeness.”
When Frank L. White passed away in 1938, a simple white marker was placed on his grave bearing no name.
In June of 2007 a rose granite stone bearing his likeness was placed on the grave after a fund raising campaign led by a family researcher.”
Often identified as “Rastus” Franks’s face still features on the boxes.
