Gray test

 

The Reverend

John Houser Gray

 

a son of

 

Miami County

&

Denison University

 

who Fought in the Civil War in the 101st Indiana Vols.,

&

an account of his Ancestral Lineage.

 

Stephen Altic

December 2013

 

John Houser Gray never knew his great grandfathers whose surnames he bore. Although he was christened after his mother's family name, the source of his middle name was Martin Houser. Martin had been a farmer in Virginia and was John's maternal great grandfather. He settled near Dayton, Ohio in the village's early years and died when his great grandson was an infant. His father Henry was born about 1709 in Shenandoah, and Martin himself was born in Shenandoah about 1762, marrying Barbara Neff there in 1786. When Dayton was just a small village, he moved his family from Virginia to Montgomery County, Ohio and settled on the east side of the Miami River a couple miles north of Dayton. This was in 1805 when Ohio was barely a state.  In 1817 Martin staked out a farm in Spring Creek Township in Miami County which had to be cleared. Fortunately, he had plenty of sons to help him do this: Isaac, Henry, John, Martin, Daniel, and Jacob. This tract was initially a 200 acre section of wild land that was given to him by his father-in-law and which Martin quickly turned into a 380 acre farm, quite a considerable piece of land for the time. He lived there until his death in February 1842.[1]

 

Martin's youngest boy Jacob was born in Virginia in 1796 and married Mary Hainey in 1818 in Ohio. Of this union their daughter Catherine was born in 1821. When she was just seventeen years old on Christmas day of 1838 Catherine married Jacob Chrisman Gray in a Methodist ceremony. Her husband was a devout Christian and Baptist and not long after their marriage Catherine converted to the Baptist church in Piqua where they lived and raised a large family that included their son John Houser Gray who arrived in 1841.[2]

 

The boy's paternal great grandfather was a veteran of the Revolution and had fought as a minuteman in the New Jersey militia. Daniel Gray was born in March 1749 in Morris County, New Jersey and died in February of 1843 in Ridgeville, Warren County, Ohio. Considering the difficulties of travel at the time it is unlikely this nonagenerian ever saw his great grandson in Miami County.[3]

 

According to his pension application, in the summer of 1775 Daniel Gray was a minuteman in the company commanded by Captain Baker of Col. "Hurd's" regiment at Amboy guarding the eastern shore of New Jersey. He served at New York for a month when the British landed at Staten Island. Under the command of Col. "Luce" he went to Springfield the day after it was burned in order to help bury those who had been killed in that engagement.[4] Young Gray also served with "Luce" along the Delaware River acting against the Indians there. It is likely that Daniel Gray served with Col. Nathaniel Heard of the First Battalion Middlesex Militia made up of men from Middlesex, Essex, and Somerset. Although in his pension application Daniel stated he was born in Morris County, there are notations that he was from Essex. In any case Heard's men were stationed at Perth Amboy and Elizabethtown in 1776, places confirmed by Daniel Gray in his pension application. They were also engaged in arresting Tories in Queens and Staten Island. Jesse Loose was an officer in the First Battalion, and he is likely the officer under whom Daniel served.[5]

 

When Daniel Gray filed for his pension as a very old man in 1832 he was living in Butler County, Ohio but had only resided there for a year. After the war he had remained in his native state until moving west to Ohio with his family in 1809, locating in Warren County for twenty two years. Perhaps part of the reason he was in the militia and not the Continental line was that he was married. According to a family note in his pension, Daniel Gray and Phoebe Butler were married July 1, 1775. Their son Lewis was born in 1780. Minutemen and militia could come and go (and did so) more easily than regular troops, and perhaps his family explains why he was not part of the Continentals. His pension indicates on and off he was in service for about eighteen months. Phoebe and Daniel had nine children, some of whom stayed in New Jersey when the family moved to Ohio in 1809.[6] While Daniel was born in Morris County, it seems he raised his family in the county adjacent to the east, Essex. This is probably why he was a member of Nathaniel Heard's militia, since it came from Essex in part.

 

One son who moved west with his parents to Ohio was Amos Gray, born in Essex County, New Jersey in 1787. He married Sophia Chrisman in 1811 in Warren County, Ohio and they raised a large family of eleven children. Amos was a prosperous farmer in Spring Creek Township in Miami County where he had moved at least by 1840, perhaps much earlier. By 1870 he had moved to Piqua because of age and infirmity and died there in 1875.[7]

 

The first child of Amos and Sophia, who was born in 1812, was Jacob Chrisman Gray. He was a carpenter and businessman in Piqua and became quite prosperous, eventually a principal in the firm Worrell, Anderson, & Gray, a lumber company and mill that operated on River Street in Piqua along the Miami. J.C. Gray and his wife Catherine Houser Gray raised their family in Piqua. Jacob constructed for his family a beautiful house that still stands at the corner of Ash and Broadway. Built about 1860, it is Italianate style, of brick construction. They raised six children, two boys and four girls. As will be apparent, Jacob and Catherine valued a good education for their children in addition to providing a commodious home.[8]

 

Both sons of Jacob and Catherine were soldiers during the Civil War. The younger boy, William Houser Gray was born in 1847 in Piqua. In May 1864 when he was seventeen years old, William joined Company H of the 131st Ohio as a private. This was a 100 days regiment made up of Ohio National Guard units and organized at Camp Chase in Columbus. It mostly retained men from Montgomery County. The 131st did garrison duty at forts near Baltimore until being mustered out in August 1864 at Camp Chase. His older brother John had been away in the army since 1862, and the younger boy was likely anxious to sign up as soon as he could. William may have been involved as well in the Squirrel Hunters who were employed almost as "minutemen" in the defense of Cincinnati against raiders.[9]

 

William returned home from his guard duty in Maryland in 1864 to the house on Ash Street and went back to school. In 1866 he graduated from Piqua High School. He then went on to study engineering in college. Like his brother John before him, William then attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio, a Baptist school. This was a natural choice as his father especially was a devout Baptist and a deacon in the church, and his brother was attending Denison at the same time. It does not seem, however, that William graduated from Denison (none of the Denison alumni catalogues include his name). His biographies simply state he attended there for three years. This was immediately after high school--from 1866 through 1869 William was a student in Granville. He clearly spent three years in study there, but no record could be found that he graduated. In the 1870 census he was an engineering student, so perhaps he went on to another school for that. After his college studies William briefly entered his father's business and then became a civil engineer for a railroad company; after that he was engaged by an insurance company in Cincinnati. In 1881 he married Orpha Buckingham and moved to Chicago in 1884 where he remained until his death in 1940. After moving to Chicago with his wife, he remained engaged in the insurance business until sometime after the turn of the century. By 1910 he was in the cattle business and had interests in oil and natural gas. By retirement William had accumulated a sizeable wealth---his obituary described him as a "retired capitalist", obviously a reference to his business acumen and financial security. Among other accomplishments he was an active Mason and was appointed the chairman of the Cuban Relief Commission in 1897, as well as a member of the distinguished Union League in Chicago, and was always prominent and active in Chicago civic and community affairs. He was buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Cook County.[10]

 

Returning to the principle subject of this report, John Houser Gray was born in Piqua, Miami County, Ohio on Christmas Day of 1841, the son of Jacob Chrisman Gray and Catherine Houser Gray, grandson of Amos Gray, and great grandson of Daniel Gray and Martin Houser.[11] Along with his siblings William H. (his only brother), Mary Jane, Sarah Margaret, Anna Frances, and Martha Alice he received a good education and lived in a comfortable home. His father, as has been described, was a successful carpenter, contractor and businessman in town. His mother Catherine was devoted to her home and children and "loved the beautiful", reflecting this philosophy in the design of her home and her furnishings.[12]

 

John  probably graduated from Piqua High School, perhaps in the late 1850s or 1860 and seems to have been a schoolteacher when the Civil War commenced in 1861.[13] But when he enlisted on August 18, 1862 as a Corporal in the army it was not along with other Piquads or boys from Miami County. When he enlisted John was the only one in his company from the Buckeye state. His sister Mary Jane, the eldest of all the Gray siblings, had married Edward K. Hall who was born in Pennsylvania. In 1860 Mr. Hall was a grocery merchant in Noblesville, Hamilton County, Indiana. When John enlisted in the 101st Indiana Volunteers at Noblesville he was employed by his brother-in-law Edward Hall. Since this was in the summer of 1862, it may have been that local regiments from Miami County were filled up. So John, finding himself in Indiana, simply joined the local company (Co. D of the 101st) from Noblesville. Company D was forming that summer and John was probably excited by the local patriotic fervor and joined the local boys.  He obviously was regarded well enough in his new home to be selected Corporal. And so, John Houser Gray spent three years in Co. D. of the 101st Indiana Volunteer Infantry.[14]

 

Just a number of months after enlistment, John's entire company was assigned to duty with the 19th Independent Battery Indiana Light Artillery. It seems, though, that he and his comrades in Company D remained with the 101st Indiana during the war which included Atlanta and Sherman's march to the sea. At Chickamauga, however, John fought with the 19th Indiana Battery. Years later he wrote how he suffered permanent deafness because of this battle and artillery action. Near Resaca along with many of the other men in his company, John was afflicted with scurvy and "sore eyes" that became a chronic problem. He was treated for some time  by Dr. William Graham, the regimental surgeon of the 101st Indiana for this ailment. The problems of poor diet and its scorbutic consequences left John with dental problems and the loss of most of his teeth by the end of the war.[15]

 

In June of 1865, John was mustered out of service. He spent two weeks at his sister's home in Noblesville, and then returned to his family home in Piqua. Almost immediately John went back to school at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. His college studies had been interrupted by the war. While the Denison catalogue of 1860-61 does not mention John, this may be an inadvertent omission. The 1861-62 catalogue for Denison University mentions that he was a sophomore during that academic year and roomed in the Western Edifice.[16] The presumption is that he entered Denison in 1860. After his sophomore year ended in early summer or late spring of 1862 John probably went to Noblesville, Indiana to work for his brother-in-law in a summer job. Like so many other college boys at the time he suddenly found his studies interrupted by the Civil War, unable to resist the youthful drive to experience the life of a soldier.

 

At the end of the war, after three years of soldiering, John returned to Denison to start his junior year. Recall that John was raised as a devout Baptist, following his father's direction. Denison had begun in 1831 as the Baptist College for Ohio and until 1845 it was known as the Granville Literary  and Theological Institution. Between 1845 and 1856 it was simply the "Granville College". In 1856 the school was relocated to the hill north of the village center where it remains today and became Denison University. It was natural that John would want to attend a Baptist institution, especially since his interests were theological.[17] He completed his studies in 1867 as a senior, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree as a member of the Franklin College Literary Society that was founded at Denison in 1841.[18]

 

After graduation from Denison  with his A.B. in 1867, the Rev. John Houser Gray set about his Baptist ministry. From 1867 until 1869 he preached to congregations in Perrysville, Ohio in Ashland County; then in Seville in Medina County from 1869-71; in Madison, Ohio from 1871-73; and finally in Olena, south of Norwalk, from 1873-1878.[19] After eleven years of being a Baptist preacher, Rev. Gray retired from that occupation.

 

Perhaps he took a cue from his ascendingly prosperous brother William and decided small town preaching would not feed his family. For whatever reason, Rev. Gray decided to quit the ministry. According to the Denison directory, in 1879 he became the Secretary and Manager of the Cincinnati Life Association.[20] This position as an insurance executive would provide more secure support for his wife and family--in 1868 John had married Elizabeth (Libbie) Ann Gibbon.[21] They raised three girls, Grace, Florence, and Gold.

 

By 1900 John had left the insurance business and was a real estate agent.[22] He had not been, at least actively, a Baptist pastor since 1879 or so. Still, he always viewed himself as a man of God--in the Cincinnati directory of 1925 he was listed as "Reverend John H. Gray".[23] 

 

His wife Elizabeth died in 1911 at Branch Hill, northeast of Cincinnati,[24] and their daughter Gold remained with her father until his death in 1931 of a stroke. Gold was a nurse at the time of her mother's death, but later worked for an insurance company in Cincinnati. Although John had lived apart from Piqua most of his adult life, and indeed had not lived there for over sixty years, his ties to home seemed strong. When he died he was buried at Forest Hills in Piqua near his parents and grandparents. When his daughter Gold died in 1954 she was interred there as well, even though she apparently never lived there and had grown up and worked in Cincinnati.[25]

 

John and Libbie's first daughter Grace was born in Seville in 1871 when John was a Baptist minister there. She married Roland Truitt and they made their home in Noblesville. Gold was born in 1872 in Madison and apparently never married. Florence was born in 1883 in Cincinnati and married a man named Elder. Florence Elder died in Pueblo, Colorado in 1915, leaving two small children.[26]

 

Stephen Altic

December 2013

Columbus, Ohio