Edward Gray

1751 - 1838

Claimant or beneficiary

Biography

London merchant, partner in Gray, Whitworth (q.v.), awarded part of the compensation for the enslaved people on Seaman's Valley in Portland Jamaica.

  1. Son of Abraham Gray, wine merchant of Tottenham (d. 1794) & his wife Rebecca nee Walker. Brother of Walker Gray, brandy merchant of Southgate House. The family were prominent Quakers. Married (1) Lydia (d.1791), daughter Daniel Bayley of Cirencester 1784; (2) Rachel Satterthwaite 1794. One surviving daughter from first marriage, Lydia (1786-1820), married John Smith Wright.

  2. Edward Gray's sister, Mary, married John Scandrett Harford of Blaise Castle, Gloucs, whose family were prominent Bristol merchants involved in the West India trade banking, America trade, shipping and the brass trade. The Harfords were also Quakers, who first established a brass works in the early 1700s. Edward Harford (John Scandrett's grandfather) was also a tobacco merchant and ship owner trading with the West Indies.

  3. A second sister, Elizabeth (d. 1781), married John Vickris Taylor in 1776. They had two children Elizabeth (1777-77), & Abjohn b 1778. Taylor's family owned the Taylor Walker brewery. He became close friends with John Scandrett Harford, both of whom were active supporters of abolitionist movement. The Harford/Taylor families had a long standing connection through Truman Harford (1703-1750), married (1) Mary, daughter of Caleb Dickinson and Sarah Vickris of Jamaica; m. (2) Mary, daughter James Taylor and Elizabeth Vickris. John Vickris Taylor was in partnership in the brewery with Truman Harford Jnr before 1793.

  4. Will of Edward Gray of Harringay House near Hornsey proved 31/10/1838. Edward Gray's property, including Whitworth & Gilbee's premises, was auctioned off by direction of the trustees and pursuant to the will of Edward Gray Esq.

  5. Edward Gray built Harringay House in 1792 and built up a renowned art collection there: he also appeared in J.C. Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1824). Gray's whole collection was bought by William Buchanan and James Morrison for £15,000 in 1839.


Sources

T71/868 Portland no. 44. Registered 1832 by James Johnson 'atty for Edward Gray Esq of London' T71/157 p.121.

  1. 'Quaker British Isles', fully referenced family history at: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/QUAKER-BRITISH-ISLES/2013-07/1374236902; Harringay Online: http://api.ning.com/files/hiOw4xekqhn01K-5U7-RgxiUbcON3JjKdJAyW*v6Tqw-5bpjWg0G534OegAQvr5CIUMx28rTRDYOfFlOhCLWJCnUO77rNWJE/GrayFamilyTree3.xls.pdf

  2. 'Harford of Blaise Castle', in John Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol.4, pp. 638-40; Alice Harford, Annals of the Harford family (London, 1909). Available at: https://archive.org/details/annalsofharfordf00harf

  3. 'The descendants of William Harford': http://www.pennyghael.org.uk/Harford.pdf

  4. PROB 11/1901; Times 17/11/1838 p. 8.

  5. For more information see images and notes on Harringay Online: http://www.harringayonline.com/photo/album/show?id=844301%3AAlbum%3A32564&test-locale=&exposeKeys=&xg_pw=&xgsi=&groupId=&groupUrl=&xgi=&commentPage=&page=1; Literary Gazette (1839)

We are grateful to Angela Burge for sharing her research and the work of Harringay Online in helping to compile this entry.


Further Information

Absentee?
British/Irish
Spouse
(1) Lydia Bailey; (2) Rachel Satterthwaite
Children
Lydia
Occupation
Merchant
Religion
Quaker

Associated Claims (1)

£4,624 4s 9d
Awardee

Associated Estates (2)

The dates listed below have different categories as denoted by the letters in the brackets following each date. Here is a key to explain those letter codes:

  • SD - Association Start Date
  • SY - Association Start Year
  • EA - Earliest Known Association
  • ED - Association End Date
  • EY - Association End Year
  • LA - Latest Known Association
1815 [EA] - 1829 [LA] → Joint owner
1832 [EA] - 1834 [LA] → Owner

Legacies Summary

Commercial (1)

Name partner
Gray Whitworth & Gilbee
West India merchant?  
 

Cultural (5)

Paintings
Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels, By Rembrandt, purchased by the National Gallery in 1976. The painting had been acquired in Amsterdam by William Buchanan for Edward Gray in 1817, and was purchased as... 
notes →
...
Paintings
Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon, by Claude Lorraine. Now in the Museum of Fine Arts,... 
notes →
...
Paintings
Portait of a Man as Mars, by Peter Paul Rubens, sold to a private buyer by Sotheby's New York in 2000 on behalf of Centrust, reportedly as a realist of regulatory pressure on the US financial... 
notes →
"The Portrait of a Man as the God Mars is a remarkably rare example of allegorical portraiture in Rubens’s oeuvre. The love that Rubens had for classical antiquity is well known;’ we are told of...
Paintings
Portait of Laura de Dianti, by Titian. Now reportedly in the Heinz Kister Collection Kreutzlingen... 
notes →
The True Portrait of Laura de' Dianti by Titian, Herbert Cook The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs Vol. 7, No. 30 (Sep., 1905), pp....
Paintings
A Peasant Family at Meal-Time, ('Grace before Meat), by Jan Steen, c. 1665. Now in the National... 
notes →
...

Physical (1)

Country house
Harringay House [Built] 
description →
Edward Gray built Harringay House in 1792 and built up a renowned art collection there: he also appeared in J. C. Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1824). There is some description...

Relationships (2)

Business partners
Business partners

Addresses (1)

London, Middlesex, London, England