Obituary of Mary Gray, Washington & Pulaski counties, AR

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Submitted by: Bill Bogges <billboggess@webtv.net>
        Date: 24 Jan 2006
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
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GRAY Obit from Northwest Arkansas Times (formerly The Fayetteville Daily
Democrat) Fri Evening, Feb 18 1938

Mrs. O. C. Gray Dies in K.C.; Burial Here

Step-Mother of Carl Gray, Union Pacific President; Funeral Tomorrow A.M.

Mrs. Mary Beattie Gray, step-mother of Carl Gray, president of the Union
Pacific railway, and wife of the late Col. Oliver Crosby Gray, for many
years a resident of Fayetteville and Little Rock, died yesterday in Kansas
City.

The body was cremated in Kansas City today and accompanied by Carl Gray and
his step-sister, Mrs. John Beattie Bell of Belzoni, Miss., is expected to
arrive in Fayetteville for burial tomorrow, over the Frisco lines.

The funeral party will reach here at 9:35 a.m. and proceed at once to
Evergreen cemetery where the ashes will be buried beside Col. Gray. Friends
of the family who care to do so are asked to join the funeral party at the
train and accompany them to the cemetery where funeral services will be
said.

Rev. Harry Goodykoontz, pastor of First Presbyterian church of which the
Gray family were members during their residence here, and in which Col.
Gray was an elder during his local residence, will officiate.

Col. Gray was a veteran of the Confederate Army, third Arkansas Cavalry,
and was buried in Fayetteville with Confederate military honors following
his death in Little Rock where he served as head of the blind school for a
number of years after leaving Fayetteville where he was on the University
faculty.

Col. and Mrs. Gray and Col. Gray’s son, Carl Gray, and Mrs. Gray’s two
daughters resided in Fayetteville on Dickson street near the Frisco station
where Carl Gray got his first railway job. A portion of the home is still
standing.

Mrs. Gray was the former Mrs. Mary M. Beattie. Besides her famous step-son,
she leaves two daughters, Mrs. John Bell of Belzoni, Miss., who accompanies
the ashes, and Miss Grace Beattie, an instructor in the Colorado School for
the Deaf at Boulder, Colo., who is unable to be present.

Mrs. Gray lived here from her marriage to Col. Gray in 1889 until the
family removed to Little Rock where Col. Gray died.

Her husband returned to Arkansas after the War Between the States to resume
his teaching in which he was engaged before hostilities. He first was
principal of St. John’s Junior College in Little Rock and later its
president from which office he and his family came to Fayetteville where he
was professor of mathematics on the University faculty from 1875 to 1886.
In 1886 Col. Gray resigned from the University faculty to accept
principalship of Fayetteville public schools, which office he held two
years, after which he returned to the University, a position he held until
1895, when he was elected superintendent of the blind school at Little
Rock. From 1899 to 1901 he was principal of the Speers-Langford Institution
at Searcy. In 1901 he was re-elected blind school superintendent, a
position he held until his death.

He was twice married. His first wife was Miss Virginia L. Davis, (Carl
Gray’s mother) to whom he was married in 1857. In 1889 he was married to
Mrs. Mary M. Beattie who with her two daughters, mentioned above, and his
son, survived him.

Mrs. Gray for a number of years has been ill in Kansas City and her death
was not unexpected.