William Hill Gray
William Hill Gray was a Virginia lawyer, planter and politician who served two single and widely separated terms in the Virginia House of Delegates, representing his native Loudoun County, and also held local offices in Leesburg as well as Loudoun county.
Early life and education
Born to the former Ann Glass Vance and her husband Robert Gray, who had emigrated from Ireland in 1784 and would die in nearby Winchester, the Frederick county seat around the time this man reached legal age, he received an education appropriate to his class.Career
Loudoun County voters in 1842 refused to re-elect any of their former representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates and instead elected this man, John A. Carter and Daniel Miller. However, they only re-elected John A. Carter. Gray was elected mayor of Leesburg in late 1843.In 1840 Gray owned several slaves in Loudoun county. In 1847, not long after his mother's death, Gray purchased the 405 acre Locust Hill plantation in Loudoun County for $12,700. Nearly a decade earlier, in 1836, Gray sent at least his very young daughter Frances to the prestigious school run by Margaret Mercer, who was known for her religious devotion, as well as emphasis on morality and ethics. Other Loudoun slaveholding gentry, the Harrison and Mason families, would also send their daughters to Mercer's school in the next decade. Gray would also pay his slaves in cash and clothing for the work they performed on their day off, as well as corn. Gray purchased Emily, the wife of his male slave George, after she had given birth, and the couple had five more children before 1853, when he sold all "at their own request" to a local farmer for $3200. In 1860, Gray owned nine slaves, including an infant girl, an 85-year-old woman, three women in their 30s, and four men ranging from 19 to 50 years old.
During the Civil War, federal troops occupied Leesburg in the spring of 1862, and raided Locust Hill on September 20–24, 1863. Before these raids, Gray often visited in-laws at
Llangollen, Cuthbert Powell's former estate. "Baker's detectives" dug up Gray's cellar looking for bank deposits on October 14, 1863, as well as stole meat, corn and a buggy harness, which prompted Gray two weeks later to move to Leesburg and take possession of "Knox's house." On November 4, "Yankees" took 12 cattle Gray valued at $1000 and three days later took a riding mare. On June 4, 1864, Gray was taken prisoner and sent to Washington D.C., but permitted to return home on parole on August 13. However, he returned to Washington on August 22 and was finally released on September 1, 1864.
Following the American Civil War, on June 1, 1865, Gray was selected as one of Loudoun County's 27 gentleman justices of the peace, and his fellows elected him as their president on July 10, 1865, with the remaining new officials being Charles P. Janney as county clerk, Samuel C. Luckett as sheriff, William B. Downey as Commonwealth attorney and Samuel Ball as commissioner of revenue. The following day, Gray requested George K. Fox Jr., the county court's clerk, to return the records entrusted to him to the county. On August 3, 1865, Gray traveled to Richmond to retrieve bank assets, and on September 5 and 6, 1865 traveled to Washington to release his land.
Later that year, Gray again became one of Loudoun County's two representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates, alongside R.M. Bentley, but again was not re-elected. During that second legislative stint, on November 28, 1865, Gray sold Locust Hill and three other parcels for the benefit of creditors, and on May 1, 1868, that foreclosure trustee conveyed Locust Hill to R. Beverley Clark. He lived many of his final years in the household of his daughter Frances, and her wealthy farmer husband, William Beverley.
Personal life and distinguishing other men of the same name
Gray married twice, first to Francis Ellzey. His wife was likely related to former state senator William Ellzey and his son of the same name Gray's surviving daughter by this marriage was named Francis Westwood Gray. She married planter William Beverley of nearby Fauquier county, and cared for her father in his final years. In November 1836, Gray married Ellen Douglas Powell, one of the daughters of former congressman Cuthbert Powell and his wife Catherine Simms. Three of her brothers survived the conflict. Gray clearly worked with Yale-educated lawyer Charles Leven Powell in Fauquier and Loudoun Counties before the Civil War and afterward returned to Alexandria and operated a successful school. Gray gained a son from that second marriage, Rev. Arthur Powell Gray who became an Episcopal priest and served in various parishes in the Commonwealth before dying in Lawrenceville in Brunswick County. Neither of Gray's daughters from that second marriage reached adulthood.Two other Virginia men of that era and geographic area shared the same names, but their middle "H" reflects different names. One was born in 1854 in Loudoun County and died in 1894 and unlike this man had an obituary in a Loudoun newspaper. That man's father was Robert Waterman Gray and his mother Elizabeth Bentley and both that man's sister Harriet Claggett and his brother Robert Bentley Gray survived the conflict. Although they are buried in the same cemetery, they are likely not related, since Robert Waterman Gray was born in Rockingham County and this man's father in Ireland. The other man of similar name was Scots-Irish and moved to nearby Fauquier County after the conflict. William Hamilton Gray III was the eldest surviving son of William Hamilton Gray of Patrick County, Virginia and his wife Mary Ann Powell. That William H. Gray, who became a Confederate soldier and prisoner of war, may have lived in Marion County, Virginia in 1850 but moved to the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley before the conflict, living in Warren County in 1860 and in Fauquier County in the 1870 and 1880 censuses.