Biography |
Captain Gray was prominently identified with the history and development of his town and county. In 1778 he accompanied General Sullivan's expedition, and his draft of Col. William Butler's march and a letter to Robert Erskine are printed in the Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, Vol. XV. He was made paymaster of the county militia in 1781; collector of excise in 1783; and deputy surveyor in 1791; he was auditor of Augusta township in 1787 and overseer in 1791; in 1796 he was one of the trustees appointed to purchase a schoolhouse for Sunbury.
Captain Gray was a Presbyterian and in 1787 he and Abraham Scoot, representing the congregation of Sunbury, united with the representatives of the Northumberland and Buffalo congregations in extending a call to Rev.Hugh Morrison, a licentiate of the Presbytery of Root, Ireland, who had been admitted to the Presbytery of Donegal in 1786; this call resulted in the establishment of the first Presbyterian Church in Sunbury. He was a member of the Pennsylvania State Society of the Cincinnati, and was made a Mason in Royal Arch Lodge No.3, at Philadelphia, during the Revolution. He first appears in Lodge No. 22, at Sunbury, as a visitor on Aug. 31, 1781, and on Jan. 7, 1784, was elected a member of that lodge. He was elected worshipful master of the Lodge Dec. 27, 1784; Dec. 27, 1791; June 24, 1793; Dec. 28, 1795; Dec. 27,1797; June 28, 1798, and Dec. 27, 1799. He was an enthusiastic Mason and some of the meetings of the lodge were held in his house, which was a large two-story log house standing at the southeast corner of Second and Walnut streets. The tax records at Sunbury show that in 1795 he was assessed as the owner of 760 acres of land, sixty town lots, five horses, one house and lot and one slave. Captain Gray was drowned in the Bloody Spring, near Sunbury, July 18, 1804; he had been working in the harvest field and sustained a stroke of apoplexy while leaning over drinking from the spring.
Capt.William Gray was married to Mary Brady, daughter of Capt. John Brady, who had served in the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars, and who was shot by the Indians near Muncy in 1779. Captain Brady was a son of Hugh Brady, of Cumberland county, Pa. His wife, whose maiden name was Mary Quigley, was a daughter of James Quigley, of Cumberland county.
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