255
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1861
was elected to the Forty-fourth Congress, and to the five succeeding Con- gresses (March 4, 1875-March 3, 1887) ; he was also elected to the Fif- tieth Congress, but resigned, March 4, 1887, to become a senator. He served in the United States Senate from March 4, 1887, to June 10, 1891, at which time he resigned, returned to Texas to be appointed a member of the Railroad Commission of the State, and served as chairman of this Com- mission from 1897 until 1903. He died at his home in Palestine, Texas, March 6, 1905, and is buried in East Hill Cemetery of that city. See Rea.gan Papers, Texas State Library; Reagan Memofrs, edited by W. F. McCaleb (1906); B. H. Good, Life of John H. Rea.gun (M.S., a Ph.D. thesis), University of Texas Library; C. W. Ramsdell, Reconstrnction in Texas; S. S.. McKay, Making the Texas Constitution of 1876; C. S. Potts, Railroad Tmnsportation in Texas; Dictiona,-y of A1ne1·ican Biography, XI, 432-434. 3 Peter W. Gray (December 12, 1819-October 3, 1874), son of William Fairfax Gray, was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia. His father, a lawyer of excellent education and ability, moved his family to Texas in 1837, and settled at Houston. In that same year the elder Gray became clerk of the House of Representatives of the Republic, and subsequently was elected district attorney, a position he held until his death in 1841. Peter W. Gray was reared and educated chiefly at Houston, Texas. He studied in his father's law office, and succeeded him as District Attorney, by the appoint- ment of President Sam Houston. In 1846, he was elected to the State Legislature, and served with considerable distinction in that position; while in that position, he wrote the "Practice Act," an act that led to the present system of pleading in Texas courts. In 1854, he was elected judge of the Houston District, a district composed of ten counties, reaching from the Sabine to the Brazos, and almost identical with the First Congressional District. He held this poi;ition until the outbreak of the Civil War. He represented this same district in the Confederate States Congress, and be- came one of the confidential friends and advisers of President Jefferson Davis. In 1864, Davis appointed him fiscal agent of the Confederacy in the Trans-Mississippi Department, and he held this position until the end 9f the war. After the close of the Civil War, he returned to Houston, Texas, and resumed his law practice. In 1873, he toured Europe; in 1874, Governor Coke appointed him Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Judge W. P. Ballinger, but ill health caused him to resign this position on April 18, after only two months of service on the bench. He died the same year, October 3, 1874. In 1843, Peter W. Gray married Jane Avery, of Houston. She survived him until February 3, 1894. He was a zealous Mason from early manhood, and did .much for the promotion of that order in Texas. See Lewis Pub- lishing Company, The Histo111 of Texas, and a B-iogi-aphical Histoi-y of the Cities of Houston cmd Galveston, 599-601; J. H. Davenport, The History of the Supreme Court of Texas, 115; Z. T. Fulmore, The Hi.'~to1·y and Gcog1·a11hy of Texa.s as Told in Cozmty Names, 198; Norman G. Kittrell, Governors Who Have Been, and Other Public Men of Texas, 63; James Lynch, The Benck and Bar of Texas, 114-115; Homer S. Thrall, A Pic- torial Histo1-y of Texas, 546. •John D. Stell was a large landholder and public-spirited man of Leon County, Texas. He was a representative of th'at county in the Eighth
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