Namesakes
George Washington Grayson (family reference #322) was born in 1803. His children David, Dollie, Elizabeth, and Hester each died in the 1960s. Think about those implausible dates for a moment.
George’s grandfather William Grayson (#3, c1736-1790) was a family friend and near-neighbor to George Washington in Colonial Virginia, serving as lawyer to the gentleman farmer, than as military secretary, aide-de-camp, and regimental colonel to the general. William’s wife bore a son they named George Washington Grayson (#32, c1778-1832), surely among the first to be named in honor of the future president.
Pioneer Family
In lieu of pay and in recognition of their service, Revolutionary War soldiers and their heirs were awarded bounty land out west, the only requisite being they appear in person to claim and improve the land. Neither William nor his wife Eleanor lived long enough to do so, but in 1800 their 21-year old son G.W. Grayson (32) appears on a tax list of residents of Greenup, Kentucky on the Ohio River. There George met 16 or 17-year-old Pennsylvania-born Rachel McCord. The young pioneer couple bore two children in short order, almost certainly in a log cabin.
George 32 temporarily returned to Virginia, where he remarried in March 1804. Infant George, older sister Betsy (321), and their mother remained in Kentucky. In 1806 Rachel remarried as well, bearing at least three sons to her new husband. By the August 1810 census, Betsy and young George’s recently widowed and newly re-wed biological father had returned to Greenup with a third child, Virginia-born Frances Edmonds Grayson (323). A fourth, whom he also named George Washington Grayson (324), was born in Kentucky in 1811. Though we can only image how Rachel and her young Grayson children felt at the time, shadows of his father’s actions would manifest in the life of George 322.
The Graysons and Slavery
George and Betsy’s grandfather William manumitted his slaves at his death in 1790. Their father George 32 was nevertheless a slaveholder, his 1810 Greenup census documenting 9 free whites and 5 slaves. George 32’s Pennsylvania-born first wife Rachel, widowed in 1819, had no slaves in her 12-person 1820 Kentucky household which included teen aged Betsy and George.
Betsy Grayson Croan
George’s 18-year old sister Betsy married Thomas Croan in October 1820. They settled in Carter County, KY, likely on land offered to them by her uncle Robert Harrison Grayson (33). The Graysons operated a salt works there on the Little Sandy River in the early 1800s, and the county seat is named for the family. Thomas and Betsy raised 10 children in Carter County. They never owned slaves. When Thomas died in the early to mid-1850s, Betsy and her family moved to Missouri. By 1857 they had settled in Oskaloosa, Kansas.
George W. Grayson
In 1824 George 322 married Kentucky-born Sallie Ellington, daughter of a Virginia Revolutionary War veteran. George and Sallie settled in Lawrence County, KY, where the 1830 Census documents three children under age 5 and one slave, a young woman. They relocated to Platte County, Missouri in 1837, about 30 miles east of the recently-established Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. By 1840 the couple had eight children and two slaves, a man and a woman both under age 23. In 1850, eight Grayson children still lived in the household along with six slaves, three of the latter under the age of 8.
Bleeding Kansas
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 decreed that settlers would decide whether those prospective states would enter the Union as slave or free. Settlers of both opinions flooded into the Kansas territory, from 800 registered residents in May 1854 to more than 8000 in March of 1855. Armed bands came and went to intimidate and to vote illegally. Territorial governors and federal troops intervened sporadically and ineffectively. For five years, the region was known as “Bleeding Kansas.” 1856 was particularly bloody. The Sack of Lawrence and the Pottawatomie Massacre are among the most remembered events, but continual guerrilla raids on towns and citizens, and in-kind responses to the same, proliferated throughout that summer and fall.
An 1883 history states, “G.W. Grayson, farmer and stock raiser, is a native of Kentucky. In 1837 he came to Missouri, being one of the pioneers of the Platte purchase. In the spring of 1855 he came to Kansas, locating in Jefferson County. Since that time he has been prominently identified with the farming interests. During the troubles of 1856, he did not take part in the question at issue.”1
Perhaps not, but the issue could not be ignored.
The Death Of John Q.A. Grayson
Of the ten children of George and Sallie, by 1855 three of the four girls were married, and their oldest son George (3222) had migrated west, where he became a wealthy miner and rancher. George 322 and four older sons relocated to Oskaloosa, Kansas while Sallie remained in Missouri with her two youngest children, living with her most recently married daughter, 17-year old Nancy Grayson Baker (3226). On September 13, 1856, 23-year old John Q. A. Grayson (3224) was recruited from the Grayson home at Oskaloosa to act as a guide for a detachment of U.S. light cavalrymen. Coming upon the nearby campsite of about 100 Free-staters recently involved at a skirmish five miles distant, the men in the camp were disarmed and arrested. The federal troops were reportedly planning to locate and arrest the pro-slavery skirmishers when young John Grayson “started to ride away to warn his own party, and being mistaken for an escaping free-state prisoner, he was shot and killed. His body was then thrown into a feed box attached to a wagon and carried to Lecompton, where the prisoners were taken.” 1, 2
Additional Marriages and Children of G. W. Grayson
The following year, it appears 54-year old George had a child with his 20-year old niece Nancy Croan (3216). He married her in 1861, and Nancy died after giving birth to a second child in 1863, another George Grayson (32162), who himself apparently died in childhood.
Two sons joined opposite sides during the Civil War. Twenty-three year old Benjamin F. Grayson (3227) enlisted in the 3rd Missouri (CS) Cavalry Battalion. He was killed at Corinth, Mississippi in October 1862. W. Henry Grayson (3228) joined the 15th Kansas (US) Cavalry in October 1863. He was shot and badly wounded in December 1863 not far from Oskaloosa in an incident apparently unconnected to his army service.
Sallie followed two sons west, by 1870 living in Northern California with Nathaniel (3225) and his family. She died in Montana 1888.
In a period of a few years George had two sons killed, a third badly wounded, and lost a fourth in childhood. He also lost two wives in that same period, albeit in different ways. Additionally, his sister Betsy died in Kansas in 1865. In 1864 60-year old George married 35-year old Civil War widow Mary Elizabeth Rowe Gonser, who would bear him an additional seven children, including the aforementioned David, Dollie, Elizabeth, and Hester, his 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th children, each of whom lived into the 1960s.
Joy Grayson Morton’s Memoirs
In 1972, the daughter of David Grayson (322(15)) wrote down some family memories:
“When my grandfather moved to Kansas he staked out hundreds of acres of land in what became Jefferson County. He gave the land for what became the Grayson School and probably had the school built. I went to this one room school through the 4th grade. It is still standing and being used as a community recreation house.
“Frank Anderson, a Confederate Civil War Veteran, enjoyed talking about my grandfather. He said that he was a real gentleman; that he always wore a starched shirt; and that he rode a black stallion.
“By his three wives, he had 23 children. [NOTE: I have been able to document 18.] During the Civil War it was assumed by the government that since my grandfather was a previous slave owner and from the South that he was a Confederate sympathizer, which he may have been, but it was told to me that he took no sides, just tended to his land and took care of his family. Nevertheless, the Cavalry came from Fort Leavenworth and took him to prison. This always seemed terribly unjust to me.”
After a long and colorful life, George W. Grayson died at age 84 on November 19, 1887. His third wife Mary Elizabeth survived him by 40 years. FindaGrave claims both are buried at Pleasant View Cemetery in Oskaloosa, Kansas, but Joy Morton writes:
“My parents David and Mary Ann [are] buried in the cemetery in Oskaloosa. My grandmother Mary E. Rowe Grayson is buried in my parents plot. My grandfather Grayson is buried with little Katie [daughter Mary Katherine 322(14), who died as a child] on a hill on the old Grayson home place. Their graves are unmarked except by stones, probably gone now.” 3
1 History of the State of Kansas (Chicago, A.T. Andreas, 1883) pgs. 514, 501-502
2 The Herald of Freedom (Lawrence, KS) Sat. Nov 15, 1856
3 “The Morton and Grayson Family Histories” by Joy E. Grayson Morton (1897-1975), 18-page typewritten manuscript via Ancestry.com
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