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Sources: www.grayhitandmiss.com/graymotorcompany.html (August 2012);
The Book of the
Detroiters: A Biographical Dictionary of Leading Living Men of the City of Detroit
,” Editor:
Albert Nelson Marquis. 1909 (online book);
The City of Detroit, 1701-1922
, Volume 3 by
Clarence Montroe Burton, et al (google books); “The Gray Family” by descendent, Tom
Stephenson; Various articles by Stella Haverland Rouse; “Graholm” by Jennifer Shively,
Montecito Magazine,
Fall 1999;
Montecito and Santa Barbara
by David Myrick; Ancestry.
com records;
The New York Times,
historical archives;
Detroit in History and Commerce,
1891; “A Brief History of Gray Marine Engines” by Max F. Homfeld, 1993;
The Public
Image of Henry Ford; An American Folk Hero and His Company
by David Lanier Lewis;
contemporary news articles and obituaries; Annual Bulletin of the Detroit Museum of Art,
1915-1916 (online); untitled and unpublished article by Rosario Curletti in 1951; CAMA
website; BLM land patent site; city directories; voter registration lists; and “A History of
Nantucket’s Golf Courses” by J.C. Gamble, Fall 1998. Thanks to John Crocket of the Santa
Ynez Historical Museum and Joy Chamberlain who helped track down Michael Finneran’s
ranch and to Alma Gray for information regarding the Gray family. Thanks also to Bruce
Fisher of Prudential Realty for his efforts in providing information and to the current owners
who graciously gave me a tour of their beautiful restoration and renovation of Graholm.)
private services for family and intimate friends at
Graholm
. The
Morning
Press
reported that throughout the city activities stilled, businesses closed
and banks drew their blinds, “for there was a universal feeling in the
community of a deep personal loss in his passing.”
Tributes filled the papers extolling his beneficence and generosity to
the community and lauding his democratic nature.
The New York Times
summed up his character when it, “David
Gray’s wealth was measured in millions, but friends in Santa Barbara who
abandoned their usual pursuits today to pay their last tribute to him gauge
his kindness and the fullness of his heart by his gift to a family of birds.
“It was a gift paid for, not at the expense of any of the fortune gained
from early day partial financing of Henry Ford’s automobile, but at the
cost of daily inconvenience.
“For two years the house telephone system of his mansion here has
been out of order because two wrens built their nest in the grilled door
of the front entrance telephone box. To have opened the door to make
repairs would have destroyed the nest, and Mr. Gray gave orders that it
was not to be touched.”
John Simpson Gray would have been proud of the son who
emulated the father by measuring his success “in the good that comes to
the world through him, rather than the good that came to him through
the world.”
Seen here with Henry Ford (right) in a Ford Model N at the plant on
Piquette Avenue, David Gray saw his fortune and philanthropy skyrocket
with his father’s investment in Ford (Courtesy Henry Ford Museum)