For
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| Biographies For Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume II, Biographical, 1911, page 779
FRANCIS A. J. GRAY. The great-grandfather of our subject, as a young married man, fresh from the north of Ireland, settled in western Pennsylvania, in what was then Washington county and now Greene county, near where the village of Graysville now stands, in 1770. He blazed a farm in the wilderness and built thereon a block house. Shortly thereafter Indian troubles arose and he was driven from the land to Fort Jackson, located where Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, now stands, and was kept within this fort for seven years during the Revolutionary war. In this fort, David Gray, Jr., our subject's grandfather, was born in 1781. After the Revolution, and when the Indians had ceased to trouble them, they moved back on the land where F. W. Gray, father of Francis A. J. Gray, was born in 1804, grew to manhood, married, and, in his turn, cultivated the farm located in 1770. On this same farm, in 1831, our subject, Francis A. J. Gray, was born. He was reared to early manhood in this rugged, undeveloped country, with very limited schooling and abundant privileges to work.When gold was discovered in California, he joined the rush for the precious metal, leaving his country home in February, 1850, with about twenty of his neighbors and relatives, going down to Ohio, up the Missouri, and outfitting for the trans-continental journey at Independence, Missouri. In May, 1850, they broke camp at Independence, and, after a long, hard journey, which resulted in death to several members of the party, foot-sore and weary, they landed at Hangtown, California, August 20, 1850. About two years were spent by Mr. Gray in California, seeking the yellow metal, which was not found in great abundance. He then returned to his Pennsylvania home, going down the Pacific, crossing the isthmus and back to New York.
On May 31, 1854, at Wellsburg, West Virginia, he was united in marriage with Adalene Palmer and they at once began housekeeping on the old farm in Pennsylvania. At the breaking out of the Rebellion, Mr. Gray heard the country's call for help and assisted in raising a company, and, in October, 1861, as second lieutenant of Company C, Eighteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, went to the front. This company saw its principal services in defense of Washington in the Shenandoah valley. Moseby's raids were among the principal features.
Owing to ill health, Mr. Gray resigned and returned to his Pennsylvania home in October, 1863. In January, 1864, he moved with his family to Muscatine county and settled on a farm in Wilton township, where he spent the remainder of his life and which is still occupied by his sons. The winter of 1864 saw the heaviest snow fall we think in the history of the country and when Mr. Gray arrived at Muscatine he found the highways so blocked with snow that it was three weeks before he could secure teamsters who would undertake to carry him to his farm in Wilton township, and when they did undertake the trip no more than a third of the way could they travel the highways but were compelled to go through the fields. Mr. Gray's labors as a farmer proved quite successful in Iowa. Starting in 1864 with eighty acres of land, unpaid for, at the time of his death, in 1905, he left a well improved farm of eight hundred and twenty acres, unincumbered.
Politically, Francis A. J. Gray was a Jeffersonian democrat, always affiliating with the Democratic party, and advocating what to him seemed best for the great mass of the people. He took an active part in the early life of the Patrons of Husbandry, otherwise called Grangers, among the results of whose labors was the reduction of railway fare from five cents to three cents per mile and the establishment of the railway commission. He was always opposed to all forms of sumptuary legislation and did all he could in opposition to the enactment of the prohibitory law. Mr. Gray served his county as representative in the seventeenth and eighteenth general assemblies, being elected as a Democrat while the county was republican by several hundred.
Mr. and Mrs. Gray reared a family of seven children: Thomas P., now of Keokuk, Iowa; Lucy G. Klepper, of Sweetland township, Iowa; Frank W., David W., Lindsey T., John G. and Sadie T. McClean, all of Wilton township. Francis A. J. Gray died March 3, 1905, and his widow died December 28, 1908. They are both buried in Oakdale cemetery, Wilton, Iowa.
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