Peter W. Grayson
Sherman, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Peter Wagener Grayson was born in 1788 in Bardstown, Virginia (later part of Kentucky) to Benjamin and Caroline (Taylor) Grayson, members of a politically prominent family. He served in the War of 1812 and worked in Louisville as an attorney, businessman and legislator. Well-spoken in legal matters and also a poet, he nevertheless amassed substantial debts and privately combated mental illness. In 1830, Grayson wrote to Stephen F. Austin about acquiring land in Texas, and by 1832 he had established a plantation near Matagorda. He also became a friend and advisor to Austin. During Austin's imprisonment in Mexico City in 1834, Grayson and Spencer Jack went there with petitions in hopes of freeing the empresario. In December 1834, they secured Austin's bail, although he was not free to leave until the following summer. Settlers began preparations for revolution soon after Austin returned to Texas, and Grayson worked with him to outline an independent government. Grayson also served as president of the Council of War and aide-de-camp to both Austin and Gen. Edward Burleson. After Texas' victory at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, Grayson acted as interpreter and Attorney General, signing the Treaties of Velasco on May 14, 1836. Grayson went with others to Washington, D.C. to gain recognition of the Texas Republic and discuss annexation to the United States, but the efforts were unsuccessful. He served as Texas Attorney General and as naval agent, and was Sam Houston's candidate for the Texas presidency in 1838. On July 9 of that year, though, while traveling through Tennessee, Grayson took his life, leaving a note that has previous mental illness had returned. In 1846, following the eventful annexation of Texas to the United States, the Texas Legislature created Grayson County, naming it for the Texas patriot. (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Peter Wagener Grayson, born in 1788 into a prominent Kentucky family, served in the War of 1812 and practiced law in Louisville before coming to Texas in the early 1830s, where he became a friend and advisor to Stephen F. Austin. He helped secure Austin's release from a Mexican prison, outlined plans for an independent government, and after San Jacinto served as Attorney General, signing the Treaties of Velasco. A gifted but troubled man, he took his own life in 1838 while a candidate for the Texas presidency, and the legislature later named Grayson County in his honor.
Why it matters
Grayson stands among the founders of the Republic of Texas, his life a reminder that the era's patriots were flesh-and-blood people who carried private burdens even as they built a nation.
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Related people
- · Peter Wagener Grayson
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · Sam Houston
- · Spencer Jack
Related events
- · Texas Revolution
- · Treaties of Velasco
- · Annexation of Texas
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Grayson County
Sherman, TX
Grayson County grew from Holland Coffee's 1837 trading post at the Red River's Preston Bend into a hub of the Peters' Colony and, in 1846, a county named for Republic of Texas attorney general Peter W. Grayson. Its seat, Sherman, moved to its present site in 1848 and earned fame for so many courthouses and fine 19th-century schools that it was called the "Athens of Texas." The Butterfield Trail, cattle drives, and early railroads all crossed the county, and Lake Texoma later made it a tourist draw.
Grayson County, C. S. A.
Sherman, TX
During the Civil War, Grayson County served as a Confederate military, defense, and supply hub on Texas's northern frontier. Cavalry regiments raised here captured federal forts in Indian Territory and manned a defensive line along the Red River, while Sherman depots gathered clothing and food for troops and soldiers' families. Even the notorious guerrilla William C. Quantrill camped nearby in 1863–64 before fleeing Confederate arrest.
Courthouses of Grayson County
Sherman, TX
Since Grayson County's founding in 1846, its seat of justice has taken every shape from a $232 frame building on bald prairie to a native limestone landmark. Five courthouses came and went in the county's first forty years before the railroad reached Sherman in 1873, bringing better materials and a majestic 1876 courthouse crowned with a clock-and-bell tower. That building burned in 1930, and the Depression delayed its limestone successor until 1936.
Hall Furniture Building
Sherman, TX
Missouri native and Civil War veteran Rufus Gaines Hall opened a Sherman dry goods store in 1868, prospering in part by sending thirty "notion wagons" to peddle supplies to farm families across thirteen North Texas counties. His son Dr. Hugh Logan Hall joined in 1872, and five generations of Halls ran the business here for a century. Built as two structures in 1876 and 1885 and joined in 1936, the building became a striking Art Deco storefront banded with black-and-ivory structural glass.