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Senate Years of Service: 1789-1790 Party: Anti-Administration
GRAYSON, William, (uncle of Alexander Dalrymple Orr),
a Delegate and a Senator from Virginia; born in Prince William County, Va., around
1740; attended the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania; pursued classical
studies in England at the University of Oxford and studied law in London; returned to Virginia and
practiced law in Dumfries; during the Revolutionary War was commissioned lieutenant colonel and
aide-de-camp to General George Washington and promoted to colonel January 1777; commissioner
of the Board of War 1780-1781; resumed the practice of law; member, Virginia house of delegates
1784-1785, 1788; member of the Continental Congress 1785-1787; delegate to the Virginia
convention of 1788 for the adoption of the Federal Constitution, which he opposed; elected to the
United States Senate and served from March 4, 1789, until his death in Dumfries, Va., March 12,
1790; interment on the old family estate at Belle Air, near Dumfries, Va.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography;
Bristow, Weston. William Grayson, A Study in Virginia Biography of the Eighteenth Century. Richmond College Historical Papers 2 (June 1917); DuPriest, James E., Jr. William Grayson: A Political Biography of Virginias First United States Senator.
Manassas, VA: Prince William County Historical Commission, 1977.
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