Capt. John R. Grayson, USN

A Seaman’s Life, a Savannah Legacy

[Mr. Grayson’s] gunner lay dead, with his head mashed into atoms – One of his best hands stood transfixed with the fluke of the anchor, which passed just below the small of his back, and came out through his groin.

Description of April 1811 battle at sea from Virginia Patriot, 10 May 1811

John Robinson Grayson

John Robinson Grayson, our 4th great-grandfather, was born in 1779 at Belle Air Plantation in Prince William County, Virginia, one of at least fourteen children of Mary Elizabeth Wagener Grayson and Rev. Spence Monroe Grayson. The Graysons were prominent citizens and politically connected. John was the namesake of his maternal great-uncle John Robinson, the long-time loyalist Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses and foil of patriot Patrick Henry. Young John’s uncle William Grayson served as aide-de-camp to General George Washington and as one of the first two Senators from the state of Virginia.

Impressment

In the mid-1790s John was a teen serving aboard a merchant brig belonging to his brother-in-law Lund Washington when he was “impressed” to serve as a seaman in the British Royal Navy, most likely after the vessel was boarded at sea. John’s twin brother Thomas Robinson Grayson was similarly impressed, possibly at the same time. Due to harsh working conditions, desertions, and the resulting manpower shortages, English “press gangs” would prowl seaside towns and forcibly board ships to kidnap young men. According to one source, “Between 1793 and 1812, the British impressed more than 15,000 U.S. sailors to supplement their fleet during their Napoleonic Wars with France. By 1812 the United States Government had had enough. On 18 June, the United States declared war on Great Britain, citing, in part, impressment.“¹ Despite the family’s prominence, it took several years to negotiate John’s release in 1800 at age 21. His twin Thomas was never heard from again.²

Captain, U.S. Navy

Of 26 souls on board when she went down only 6 were saved. Mr. Grayson and two men reached the marsh on the Florida side and with great difficulty supported themselves through the night.

Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger, 13 Oct. 1813

By the time of his release, John’s father Spence had passed away. John probably returned to Virginia and, having taken to sea life, was eventually commissioned an officer in the U.S. Navy. A family history source states, “He was a Sailing Master with the rank of captain when the U.S. Navy ordered him to Georgia in the War of 1812. Captain Grayson commanded a squadron of gunboats stationed at St. Mary’s to patrol the Georgia coast.” ² I found no evidence that John was responsible for an entire squadron, but plenty that he captained U.S. Gun Boat 161 for at least two and a half years off the southern coast. A news article described a grisly combat incident that occurred in April 1811 off Charleston, South Carolina:

“On the 14th, about 2PM, a sail was described to windward…. It proved to be an armed schooner, under English colors. Mr. G. immediately cleared his boat for action – at 4 the schooner passed to windward of him. and Mr. G. prepared to tack to the eastward, as he had lugged into a very considerable ground swell – while in the act of staying, the boat gave a heavy plunge, and his bow-gun… fetched way – Mr. G. immediately ran forward, where everything which presented itself to his eyes was replete with death and horror.”³

The clipping described in gory detail the deaths of at least three deck hands, and the arrival the following day of the U.S.S. Wasp, an American sloop of war later captured by the British and subsequently lost at sea with all hands. Another harrowing incident occurred to our ancestor in September 1813, this one near the town of St. Mary’s, Georgia at the Florida border:

“We had yesterday morning and night preceding one of the most severe gales I have ever witnessed… every vessel at harbor drove in shore or sank at their moorings. Gun vessel No. 161, John R. Grayson, commanding, that had just returned from conveying troops to Beaufort, upset at anchor, and of 26 souls on board when she went down only 6 were saved. .Mr. Grayson and two men reached the marsh on the Florida side and with great difficulty supported themselves through the night and until 11 o’clock the following day.”⁴

The narrative was taken from a report written by Commodore Hugh Campbell to the Secretary of the Navy which continued, “No. 161 lies sunk just above the harbor,” and described the fate of six other numbered gun boats and a hospital ship.

Ship Master, Custom House Officer

John Grayson served out the war in the U.S. Navy, and afterwards became a trans-Atlantic merchant ship captain. In September 1816 he married 15 year-old Frances Ann Harvey in Charleston, South Carolina, with whom he had three children: Our 3rd great-grandfather John Langston (born in Liverpool, England the following January. Scandalous, if the dates are correct. Perhaps that was the reason for the overseas birth?), Albert (born in Savannah in 1819, died of whooping cough less than two months later), and Frances Lucretia (also born in Savannah, 1821-1858). When John died at age 44 of “Billious Fever” in 1822 he was listed as “Custom House Officer” with a residence on York Street in Savannah.

Historic Savannah

Savannah was the first settlement in Georgia, the last of the 13 original British colonies when founded in 1733. The city sits on a bluff atop the Savannah River, about 18 miles north of the Atlantic Ocean. Savannah was arguably America’s first planned city, having been cut out of a pine forest and established in a grid pattern centered around its iconic squares, the better to organize, defend, and govern the settlers. The first cemetery in Savannah was believed to have been on Wright Square, one of the four original town squares.⁵

South Broad Street Burial Grounds

By the 1750s a new cemetery was developed on a 100 square foot plat outside the town, then expanded in 1763, 1768, and for the final time in 1789. The South Broad Street Burial Grounds was filled to more than overflowing by the early 1800s, and a third cemetery (adjacent to a ca. 1810 African-American cemetery) was established in 1819 “five hundred sixty five yards south of the present [South Broad Street] burial grounds” This new site (just south and east of Calhoun Square) proved unpopular and short-lived. Laurel Grove Cemetery was developed on former plantation land in 1852, and Cathedral and Bonaventure Cemeteries opened at nearly the same time. Many families (with varying degrees of care, ceremony, discernment, and documentation) had the bones of their relatives disinterred from the old burial grounds and moved to the newer cemeteries. The South Broad Street grounds, behind its foreboding brick walls, was left to vagrants, vandals, and decay. In 1895 most of the brick wall was demolished and a six acre Victorian-era city park now known as Colonial Park Cemetery was established, occupying (more or less) the same dimensions and bearing only a vague resemblance to the old South Broad Street Burial Ground. South Broad Street was renamed Oglethorpe Avenue in 1896.⁶

Grayson Burials

Baby Albert was probably interred at what is now Colonial Park in July 1819, the first of dozens of John R. Grayson’s descendants to be buried in Savannah. The city mayor pronounced in August 1820: “Except for the interment of persons having the bodies of relatives in the old [South Broad] cemetery, it is to be closed after the new [Calhoun Square] cemetery is completed, and with the exception stated, no other interment permitted.“² Thus when John died in 1822, because his infant son was there, he too was likely buried at Colonial Park. No record has been found for either Grayson burial, nor for any later reinterment elsewhere. John’s widow Frances remarried in January 1824, outlived two additional husbands, and left a fourth as a widower when she died in 1862. She, at least two of her husbands, and most of her seven children and their families are buried at Laurel Grove Cemetery. The remains of later generations also rest at Cathedral and Bonaventure Cemeteries in Savannah.

Burials at Colonial Park (or not)

Thus we surmise that Capt. John R. Grayson and his infant son Albert lie somewhere within Colonial Park. A 2000 brochure produced by the Savannah Park and Tree Department titled, “A Guide to Colonial Park Cemetery Established 1750” states, “Other than the small plots of land set aside for ‘strangers’, Jews, and Negroes, nearly everyone who died in Savannah between 1750 and July 1st, 1853 was buried here.” This is at best an over-simplification. Records were barely kept. There are an impressive 46 vaults or crypts, 557 marked graves (but no guarantee that many of those 557+ were not removed elsewhere), and as many as 9,000 or more unmarked graves.

Button Gwinnett, a representative in the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, has an impressive memorial at Colonial Park, erected in 1964 based on arguably dubious historical and archaeological research from 1957. Gwinnett was acting governor of the Georgia colony when actions and harsh words resulted in a 1777 duel with fellow Georgian and militia commander Lachlan McIntosh. The duel, which some sources claim may have been fought just south of Colonial Park Cemetery, resulted in the death of Gwinnett at age 42. McIntosh lived thirty additional years. Both men have counties in Georgia named for them. McIntosh is almost certainly buried at Colonial Park. Button Gwinnett? Maybe. Probably. Depends on whom you ask. He is the only one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence whose final resting place is in doubt. So too is the final resting place of John Robinson Grayson: Merchant ship captain, War of 1812 veteran, and our 4th great-grandfather.

¹ “British Navy Impressment,” History Detectives Special Investigations, https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/british-navy-impressment/

² Lawson, Terry, The Grayson Family of Georgia, http://sites.rootsweb.com/~vapwilli/history/grayson.shtml

³ Virginia Patriot, 10 May 1811, pg 3

⁴ Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger, 13 Oct. 1813 pg. 3

⁵ Landon, Charlotte, Hungry for History, City of Savannah Lecture Series. May 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okvH_5wV1H4

⁶ Hall, Jefferson, The Colonial Park Cemetery (and the lingering ghost of its old South Broad St. Cemeteries) January 2020, https://savannahhistory.home.blog/2020/01/10/the-colonial-park-cemetery-aka-the-ghost-of-the-old-south-broad-cemetery/