George Gray was born on 14 Apr 1625 in Edinburgh, Scotland, son of James E Gray (~1600 - ) and Alison (Gifert) Gray (~1605 - ).
George married Alison Wardlaw (1624 - >1659) in 1655. Their son was William Gray (1658 - ).
George married Sarah Cooper (~1658 - ~1698) in 1672 in York, Maine (York). Their children were:
George died on 31 Mar 1693 in Berwick, Massachusetts Bay Colony aged 67.[1]
George's death as 31 March 1693 in Berwick which is now in Maine of course then it was part of the Massachusetts Colony. Source is the book by William A. Householder, European Connections the Householder, Gray and Grindle families (Fort Collins,, Colorado: n.p., 1990)
George's Will is published.[2] and his probate, will and inventory reside at York County Courthouse (Maine) [3][4] A copy is available here: Page 1 and Page 2
Marriage record: GRAY, George (-1693); Sarah ____, m/2 Francis HARLOW by 1698; Jul 1672; Kittery, ME (Berwick) {GDMNH 283, 310; Kittery 475}
George and Sarah were charged with fornication before marriage on 2 July 1672, and convicted. They probably paid a fine rather than being whipped.
Sarah is sometimes said to have been the daughter of Alexander Cooper, a fellow Scottish POW. Alexander’s records are that he married in 1667, and his will of 1684 mentions only his minor son John. Sarah could not have been a daughter from the 1667 marriage, and there is no record of Alexander having an earlier marriage or child.
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Categories: United States, Gray Name Study
The Edinburgh parents above did not marry until 1629.
I am confident George was born 1622 in Haddington to Robert Gray and Nycolas Wilson and named his first son born Robert after his father.
When taken prisoner in 1650 age 28 he would have had a young family he was taken from.
My ancestor Alexander Gray and his older brother Robert both born in Haddington in the 1640s were his Scottish born sons - both naming their eldest sons George.
Alexander, Robert, and their uncle James (brother of George) lived together in Prestonkirk near Haddington.
Myself and 5 very distant cousins all have multiple DNA cousin matches to the children of George born in Maine.
Landing in Massachusetts, the royalist soldiers were sold as indentured servants, many of whom went to work at the Great Works sawmill, located on the Great Works River, until they were able to pay for their own freedom. (George Gray, formerly of Lanark, Scotland, was an example of the 150 prisoners who endured this ordeal. In 1675, he defended his family and lands when the community was attacked during King Philip's War, and died in Unity in 1693. His descendants would populate other areas of Maine, notably Deer Isle and Stonington, Maine).
The raid by Indians in 1675 was the first of several during what was known as King Philip's War. In 1690–1691 during King William's War, the village was burned and abandoned in the Raid on Salmon Falls. It was resettled in 1703 and called Newichawannock, its old Abenaki name. In 1713, it was incorporated by the Massachusetts General Court as Berwick, after Berwick-upon-Tweed, England. The first schoolhouse in the state was built here in 1719. The town was raided numerous times during Father Rale's War. Berwick was once considerably larger in size, but South Berwick was set off in 1814, followed by North Berwick in 1831. Lumbering was a principal early industry. The first lumber exported from the American colonies was clapboards and barrel staves loaded aboard Pied Cowe at South Berwick in 1634.[7] Beginning in the 19th century, Berwick had a symbiotic economic relationship with Somersworth, New Hampshire, the mill town to which it is connected by bridge.[8]