My Genealogy Hound

John F. Gray, ex-merchant, and now a farmer of Union County, Ark., was born in Wetumpka, Ala., October 15, 1841, being the second child born to E. M. and Anna (Skelton) Gray, who were natives of Alabama, moving to Union County, Ark., in 1843, here spending the remainder of their lives, the father dying in 1876, at the age of fifty-eight years, and the mother in 1846, aged thirty years. The former was an active Democrat, and was socially a Mason. John F. Gray was reared in Arkansas, but received limited early educational advantages, and at the age of nineteen years he entered the Confederate army, enlisting in Company G, Third Arkansas Regiment, and served until the cessation of hostilities, participating in the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, Wilderness, the seven days’ fight around Richmond, and in numerous other engagements of minor importance. He received a wound in the neck at Gettysburg, was shot in the left shoulder at the Wilderness, and received a slight wound in the engagements around Richmond. He was captured in the first mentioned engagement, and taken to Long Island Sound where he was kept for three months, at the end of that time being paroled. He was married in 1864, to Miss Annie Bull, a daughter of Martin and Martha (Gray) Bull, native Alabamians, and after his marriage he engaged in the mercantile business at Three Creeks, a calling he successfully followed for seven years. He then took up farming, and now owns 600 acres of fine land, with about eighty under cultivation, one-half bale of cotton and twenty bushels of corn being raised to the acre. Of three children born to himself and wife, Vista and Cleopatra are living, both of whom are living with and keeping house for their father, since the mother’s death, December 15, 1887, at the age of forty-four years. Mr. Gray is a Democrat, and on that ticket was elected tax assessor of Union County in 1882, and served in that capacity for three terms of two years each. He has been a Mason since 1864, has served as worthy master of the same for some time, and is a member of the Missionary Baptist Church, which he joined in 1884.