Background
William Crane Gray was born in Lambertville, New Jersey, on September 6, 1835, the son of Joseph Gray and Hannah Price Gray.
William Crane Gray was born in Lambertville, New Jersey, on September 6, 1835, the son of Joseph Gray and Hannah Price Gray.
In 1859 he graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio and he then went to seminary at Bexley Hall, which was then located in Gambier.
William Crane Gray was ordained to the diaconate in 1859 and to the priesthood in 1860. He served as chaplain of a Tennessee regiment during the Civil War. After the war, Gray served parishes in Bolivar and Nashville.
After two decades as rector of the Church of the Advent in Nashville, he was elected bishop of the new Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida.
His consecration was held there. In south Florida, Bishop Gray found five self-supporting parishes, 40 organized missions and 11 mission stations.
Among other churches established during his episcopate was a mission to the Seminoles in Immokalee (in 1898). In 1913, Bishop Edwin Garner Weed of Florida realized that the missionary Southern diocese had grown much more rapidly than the original diocese, due to the expansion of railroad service to Tampa and Key West, and suggested returning Marion and Volusia Counties to the original diocese, but that suggestion failed when only one of the thirteen parishes in the missionary district agreed.
Gray served for 21 years in Florida before submitting his resignation on grounds of ill health in October 1913.
Their son, Campbell Gray born January 6, 1879, later became Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana. He was buried on November 16, 1919 in Mount Olivet Cemetery (Nashville).