Alfred Gray (December 5, 1830 – January 23, 1880) was an American politician from
Kansas. He served as a state legislator and as Secretary of the state Board of Agriculture.
Gray was born to
English parents in
Evans, New York. His father died when he was 14, after which he worked to support his mother; after his mother died when he was 19, he enrolled in
law school
A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction.
Law degrees Argentina
In Argentina, ...
. He attended
Albany Law School, earning a degree in 1855, and then entering law practice.
In 1857, however, he moved to
Quindaro, Kansas
Quindaro Townsite is a former settlement, then ghost town, and now an archaeological district. It is around North 27th Street and the Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks in Kansas City, Kansas. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Pla ...
, and took up farming. He was soon elected to the
Kansas Legislature and served for a time. During the
Civil War he served in the
Union Army, and returning to Kansas politics, held a series of high-profile agricultural posts. He was a director in the
Kansas State Agricultural Society from 1866 until it was merged into the
Kansas State Board of Agriculture. He later sold his farm and moved to
Topeka to serve as Secretary of the Board of Agriculture from 1873 until his death from
tuberculosis in 1880.
is named after him.
References
1830 births
1880 deaths
Albany Law School alumni
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in Kansas
Kansas Secretaries of Agriculture
Members of the Kansas House of Representatives
People from Evans, New York
People from Wyandotte County, Kansas
19th-century American politicians
{{Kansas-politician-stub