John Hamilton Gray’s father emigrated from Glasgow to Virginia in 1771 and during the American revolution fought on the loyalist side. When the war ended he sought refuge in Shelburne, N.S., and in 1787 was invited by Lieutenant Governor Edmund Fanning to assume several important official functions on Prince Edward Island.
The elder Gray later married the daughter of Lieutenant George Burns, a proprietor and prominent public figure who had come to the Island in 1764. Thus, by the time of the birth of John Hamilton in 1811, the Gray family was established solidly within the ruling upper class of the Island, and his career, both as soldier and as politician, was to a great extent predetermined by family tradition.
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