Gray, Nancy (unknown–1863)

Type: Biography

Published: 1952

Updated: June 1, 1995

Nancy Gray, early Texas settler, moved to Texas from Tennessee with her husband, William S. Spencer, by April 1824. Karankawa Indians killed William in a fight on Bay Prairie in Brazoria. On August 19, 1824, as the widow of one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, Mrs. Spencer received title to a sitio now in Fort Bend County on the Brazos River eight miles above the site of present Richmond. In 1825 she married Thomas Barnett, and the colony census of March 1826 listed her as his wife. The Barnetts had six children. Barnett died on September 20, 1843. In 1845 Nancy married Thomas M. Gray. They had one son. Nancy Gray died before August 31, 1863, when her will was probated in Fort Bend County. She is buried in the Barnett cemetery, located on her land grant.

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Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924–28). Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence (Salado, Texas: Anson Jones, 1944; rpt. 1959). Clarence Wharton, Wharton's History of Fort Bend County (San Antonio: Naylor, 1939).

Categories:

Women
Founders and Pioneers
Pioneers

Time Periods:

Mexican Texas

The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.

Anonymous, “Gray, Nancy,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed July 03, 2022, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/gray-nancy.

Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Original Publication Date:: 1952
Most Recent Revision Date:: June 1, 1995

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