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William Grayson — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Post-War career

In 1781 Grayson returned to Dumfries and his legal practice. Like many Continental Army officers, he was an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati. He was also elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1780.

Like his brothers, Grayson owned slaves. In the 1787 Virginia tax census, by which time his eldest brother Benjamin Jr. had died, William Grayson owned eight enslaved adults in Prince William County, as well as four enslaved teenagers, two horses and eighteen cattle, compared to Rev. Spence Grayson, who owned fourteen enslaved adults, 21 enslaved teenagers, ten horses and 17 cattle.

Grayson's political career began in 1784, when he won election as one of Prince William County's two delegates (part time) in the Virginia House of Delegates. He replaced Arthur Lee and the following year would be replaced by the same man, who was then removed from office as disqualified by his federal office. Grayson had not stood for re-election because he was a delegate to the Confederation Congress from 1785 to 1787. While in that office, he helped to pass the Northwest Ordinance, including a provision that forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory.

As an Anti-Federalist, he joined George Mason, James Monroe, and Patrick Henry in opposing ratification of the proposed new United States Constitution at the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788. In that Convention, Grayson argued that the proposed constitution was neither fish nor fowl—neither strong enough for a national government nor decentralized enough for a federal one — and thus eventually would either degenerate into a despotism or result in the dissolution of the Union.

Grayson experienced the inflation caused by Virginia and other states issuing paper fiat currency during the Revolutionary War. He later wrote to James Madison that:

The Ancients were surely men of more candor than We are; they contended openly for an abolition of debts in so many Words, while we strive as hard for the same thing under the decent and specious pretense of a circulating medium. Montesquieu was not wrong when he said the democratical might be as tyrannical as the despotic, for where is there greater act of despotism than that of issuing paper to depreciate for the paying debts, on easy terms.

Death and legacy

Grayson and his family had moved to Frederick County, Virginia (where his widow ultimately died), but he died at the home of his brother Rev. Spence Grayson on March 12, 1790. He hand wrote a will shortly before his death which appointed executors and charged them to make "all my slaves born since Independance [sic] of America Free", which will was admitted to probate in Frederick County, despite some difficulties with the court clerk, on December 7, 1790. He was the first member of the United States Congress to die in office.

Rev. Spence Grayson survived another eight years, and both are interred in the Grayson family vault, with the current address (pathway and historical marker) at 2338 W. Longview Drive, Woodbridge. However, the house long out of family hands was used as a field hospital during the Civil War and the vault tomb dynamited. The estate of Richard Stonnell (who had owned the property and died in 1857) was finally settled though special chancery commissioner Eppa Hunton Jr. in 1887, with S.B. Stonnell receiving a deed and erecting a frame house atop the remaining foundation. The tomb's restoration was opposed by the property owner in 1975, but the Daughters of the American Revolution restored it in 1981 and further restoration occurred in 2005, and 2014, despite the remainder of the property being in private hands.

A grandson, William Grayson Carter, became a Kentucky state senator; another grandson was Confederate General John Breckinridge Grayson.

Spence Grayson's son John Robinson Grayson (born in 1779 at Belle Aire), was captured near the Occoquan River from the brig Polly, operated by Lund Washington. Impressed into the British Navy, upon his release in 1800, John Grayson became a captain in the United States Navy. During the War of 1812, Capt. Grayson commanded a squadron of gunboats off Georgia, where he settled. The original Belle Aire house, as well as mortuary vault, were destroyed during the American Civil War. The mortuary vault was rebuilt, encased in concrete and buried by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the early 20th century. Grayson County, Kentucky, the city of Grayson, Kentucky, and Grayson County, Virginia, were all named for the senator. in 1976, Prince William County erected a gazebo in Merchant Park beside the Weems-Botts Museum to honor William Grayson, and Virginia also erected a highway marker on Route 1 to commemorate him.