George Gray papers

George Gray (1840-1925) was a politician and judge from New Castle, Delaware. A member of the Democratic party, he served as a United States Senator from Delaware from 1885-1899. He was later appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court, Third District from 1899-1914, and served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.

George Gray was born on May 4, 1840 in New Castle, Delaware. He attended the College of New Jersey (Princeton University), graduating in 1859. Gray studied law with his father, Andrew C. Gray, and at Harvard Law School. In 1863, he was admitted to the Delaware Bar and began practicing law in New Castle. In 1870, he married hs firt wife Harriet L. Black, a New Castle native like himself.

Gray's political career began in 1876, when he was selected as a delagate to the National Democratic Convention, selecting New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden to oppose the Republican candidate Ruthurford B. Hayes. In 1879, Gray was appointed to serve as Delaware Attorney General, a position he woudl hold until 1885. In 1880, his wife died; two years later, he married her sister Margaret J. Black.

In March 1885, Delaware Senator Thomas F. Bayard, Sr., a Democrat, resigned from his Senate seat to become President Grover Cleveland's Secretary of State. The General Assembly elected Gray to fill the remaining two years of Bayard's Senate term. Gray was re-elected in both 1886 and 1892, but failed to win re-election in 1898.

While in the Senate, Senator Gray served on the Senate Patents Committee, Privileges and Elections Committee and Revolutionary Claims Committee. In 1898, he served on the commission to settle peace between the United States and Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War. In that same year, he was a member of the Joint High Commission in Quebec to settle differences between the United States and Canada.

After retiring from the Senate on March 4, 1899, President William McKinley appointed Gray to a new seat on the Thrid District U.S. Circuit Court. He served on the court until his resignation in 1914.

Gray had a long and distinguished legal career. In 1900, he was nominated by President McKinley to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, and was reappointed in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt, 1912 by President William Taft and 1920 by President Woodrow Wilson. While on the Court of Arbitration, Gray served on a number of commissions, including the commission arbitrating between United States and the Dominican Repbulic and the tribunal arbitrating between the United States and Great Britian on North Atlantic Coast Fisheries. President Roosevelt appointed Gray chairman of the commission to arbitrate a 1902 Pennsylvania coal strike.

In 1890, Gray became a member of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1915, he chaired the United States delegation to the Pan-American Scientific Congress, and also served as vice president and trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Senator Gray died on August 7, 1925 in Wilmington, DE.

Dictionary of American Biography. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960. V. 4, pp. 515-516."GRAY, George - Biographical Information." Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Accessed July 19, 2017. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000396.