The Mystery of Samuel Gray... Solved at Last!

When I was a kid, I remember looking through an old photo album that my parents used to have.  The pictures inside were black and white, full of unfamiliar faces.  One picture in particular always stood out to me and I often wondered who in the world that distinguished looking man was.

The picture was obviously taken in a professional studio.  The man didn't have the rugged looks of a laborer or a farmer.  He had a thick mustache and heavy eyebrows under a nearly entirely bald head.

He appeared comfortable in a suit.  He looked, for lack of a better word, wealthy.

All I knew was his name.  Written below the picture, in neat but unfamiliar handwriting, was "Samuel Gray."

Samuel Gray

I remember asking Mom if I was named after him, but she said no, I wasn't.  She knew this was a relative on Dad's side of the family and the picture was very old, and my dad really never said much about the picture.

Well, thanks to some rather relentless research on my part (if I don't say so myself), I have found out definitively who this man is, and thanks to a detailed portrait and biographical volume of Polk County, Iowa, I've learned a great deal about his life.  It nearly reads like a novel.

Samuel Gray was born on 19 June 1811 in Pennsylvania.  

His father, David Gray was born in 1769 Northern Ireland.  He was a professional weaver and emigrated to America in 1790 when George Washington was serving his second year as President of the new United States.

His mother, Elizabeth Selander, was born in 1775 in the colony of Pennsylvania, a year before the Declaration of Independence was written.

They were married in about 1799 in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

David and Elizabeth moved their family to Ohio shortly after Samuel was born and Samuel spent most of his childhood in Holmes County, Ohio.  

Samuel learned the trade of plastering and married Mary Long in 1833.

In 1848, Samuel, Mary and their eight children packed their worldly possessions and headed west on a 43-day journey by horse to the new state of Iowa and took up residence at Fort Des Moines which at the time had a population of 85 and two stores.

He quickly secured work as a plasterer in the fast-growing community.

Tragically, two years after arriving at Fort Des Moines, Mary died at the young age of 34 years old.  Her cause of death was unknown.  

A year after his wife's death, Samuel decided to abandon the plasterer's trade and he was elected Treasurer and Recorder of Polk County, a position he held for four years.  By then he had saved enough money to buy 51 acres of farm land in Bloomfield Township.  

Meanwhile, he married for a second time on 26 February 1852 to Sarah "Sally" Brand.  

Incredibly enough, a vein of coal was discovered on his newly-purchased farm land and he leased it for the next 20 years (presumably to the Consolidation Coal Company) allowing him and his large family to live quite comfortably.

Samuel died in 1891, at the ripe old age of 80.  He was regarded as a pillar and pioneer of the Des Moines community, a philanthropist and a self-made man.

Together, Samuel and Sally had four children.  Their oldest, Clara (called "Carrie"), was born in 1853.

Clara married Frank Hoare, the son of an English immigrant, in Polk County, Iowa in 1877.  

Clara and Frank had three daughters.  Their youngest, Nellie, married a young man named Chris Branstner.  

In 1915, Chris and Nellie had their only son, named Howard.  

That's my dad.