It was with a
broad and thorough experience as a merchant and
banker that Andrew J. Grayson entered upon his
public duties as postmaster at Blanchard
following appointment from President Wilson in
July, 1913. Practically all his active career
has been spent in the Red River country of
Northern Texas or in what is now the State of
Oklahoma. He is an Oklahoma pioneer and has
lived at various points in old Indian Territory
and the new state for fully twenty three years.
The Grayson family was of Scotch stock and came
to Virginia in colonial times. His grandfather,
John Grayson, was born in Virginia and more than
a century and a quarter ago settled the old
Grayson homestead in Madison County, Alabama. It
was in that county of Alabama that Andrew J.
Grayson was born October 19, 1852. His father,
James Gordon Grayson, was born in the same
county in 1805 and died there in 1862, having
followed farming and stock raising all his
active days. He was a democrat in politics.
James G. Grayson married Paralee Wright, who was
born in Alabama in 1821 and died in 1876. Their
children were: J. W., who is now seventy-seven,
years of age, is still living as a farmer in
Madison County, Alabama, and has been quite
prominent as a citizen and as a member of the
State Legislature; C. A. Grayson, who occupies a
part of the old homestead in Alabama; A. C.
Grayson, a farmer in Madison County; Fannie, of
Waxahachie, Texas, widow of Robert King, a
farmer; Emma Polk, who married David Allison, a
farmer in Madison County, Alabama; and Andrew J.
Andrew J. Grayson as a boy attended the public
schools in Madison County, Alabama, and in 1872
completed his early education in the high school
at Summit, Blount County, Alabama. Then until
1876 he remained on his father’s Alabama
plantation and then farmed independently in that
community for three years. In 1879 Mr. Grayson
moved to Northern Texas, was a farmer in Cooke
County for three years, and in 1882 entered the
service of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad
at Denison, Texas. He was a railroad man four
years and for two years conducted a grocery
business at Denison. The next four years were
spent in the furniture and grocery business at
Wolf City, Texas. It was in 1892 that Mr.
Grayson identified himself with what is now the
State of Oklahoma, locating at Ardmore, Indian
Territory, where for two years he was furniture
dealer and undertaker. The same business he
continued at Tecumseh, Oklahoma, for seven
years, and in 1901 moved to Earlsboro, where he
became active as a banker and for six years was
president of the Bank of Earlsboro. The Town of
Blanchard was founded in 1907, the year of
statehood, and Mr. Grayson has been one of the
prominent factors in its development since the
beginning. He established the principal
furniture and undertaking business, and still
continues the undertaking line in addition to
his public duties as postmaster. He has done
much other public service for this young town,
having served two years as a member of the town
council and four years as a member of the school
hoard. He is a democrat, a member of the
Presbyterian Church, and for the past twenty
years has been affiliated with the Ancient Order
of United Workmen at Chickasha. In Madison
County, Alabama, in 1873, Mr. Grayson married
Miss Eugenia E. Wade. Her father was Robert
Wade, a farmer in that county. They have two
children: Russia, wife of A. E. Nelson, a cotton
broker at Altus, Oklahoma; and Leonard W., who
is connected with the Neil P. Anderson Cotton
Company at Wichita Falls, Texas, and who married
Miss Ruby Van Vactor of Elk City, Oklahoma.
Source: Thoburn,
Joseph Bradfield, A Standard History of
Oklahoma, vol. 4; Published by the American
Historical Society, 1916. |