Belmont's Gray Family

April 6, 1989

By Isabel Morse Maresh

Luther Gray was born in 1781 in Peterborough, N.H. He came to Belmont — then called Greene Plantation — at the age of 18 in 1798 with his parents, following a blazed trail through the wilderness. His mother rode horseback, while the others walked. She brought with her a scion of a pear tree, which grew and endured until a severe wind storm in 1927. The tree bore fruit for over 120 years. A gavel was made of the pear wood and was used by a descendant, Bertha Gray Vicery in the Maine Daughters of Revolution. She did the research for the Belmont Gray family.

Luther and his wife Jane had a son John who was born in what is now Belmont in 1812. He married, in 1835, Nancy Hibbard of Washinton, Maine. John served in the Mexican War. Both he and his son, John Calvin Gray, served in the Civil War.

The elder John Gray enlisted in 1862 and served under Colonel Folger of the 19th Maine Infantry. Gray fought in several battles, including the Battle of Gettysburg under the hot July sun of 1863.

Gettysburg was a quiet town in a hollow, east of the South Mountain range. The countryside is rough with granite ridges, which run north and south. On July 1, 1863, the Confederate armies had encamped a few miles from the town, when they discovered the presence of the Union Army.

John Gray was in the middle of a line of men that held a ridge, from a grove of trees southward to Little Roundtop, which was the end of the Union lines held by the 20th Maine Infantry. Here, John Gray, then age 52 years, was wounded five times, and yet passed ammunition to his commanding officer when his supply was cut off.

We can only imagine the slaughter of men and horses, as they encountered in battle face to face. One account was that the forces were about equal, numbering from 70,000 to 80,000 infantry and artillery.

An Army surgeon later recorded that John Gray was "too old for the rigors of the field, aged 54 years." He returned to live out the rest of his days in his beloved home and with his family in Belmont and died there July 24, 1886. He is buried in Hillside Cemetery.