Dictionary of Glengarry Biography

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====== Gray, Robert Isaac Dey ====== 
 (1772?-7 or 8 Oct. 1804), office-holder. Parents: James Gray and his wife Elizabeth Low, U E Loyalists. James Gray, who was a major in the King's Royal Regiment of New York and father of the subject of the present article, was given land on the shore of the St. Lawrence just west of the GC-Stormont County border. Grays Creek, which is named after this family, flows for virtually all its course through GC. Robert Gray, the subject of the present article, became registrar of the Surrogate Court of the Eastern District in 1793. He was called to the bar in 1794 by an act of the provincial legislature, and was appointed solicitor general, 1795, and later was treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada. He was MLA for Stormont and afterwards Stormont-Russell. Gray accumulated a remarkable number of offices in his short career. His rise was a phenomenon peculiar to the time and place. In Upper Canada educated talent was rare and political influence paramount. He was not a Glengarrian, but a man who by his home base and personal connections fits into the GC story. At the time of his death he owned 12,000 acres of land. He was drowned in the sinking of the //Speedy//. Unmarried. His slave John Baker survived him, and by his will, Gray emancipated Baker’s mother and her children and made provision for their support.

<tab>See also [[mcdonald_john_of_garth|John Mcdonald of Garth]], a later owner of part of the Grays Creek property. For GC and the //Speedy//, see also [[macdonell_angus4|Angus Macdonell of Collachie]].


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<fs small>Life of Gray by Robert J. Burns, //Dictionary of Canadian Biography//, V, 388-389 * Johnson: index * Brendan O’Brien, //Speedy Justice: the Tragic Last Voyage of His Majesty’s Vessell Speedy// (1992) * //Bibliography of Glengarry// 72, 174-175 on GC and the //Speedy// * William Renwick Riddell, //Upper Canada Sketches// (1922) 127-145: essay “Robert Isaac De Gray” (includes the text of Gray’s will)
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