William Crane Gray
| The Rt. Rev. William Crane Gray | |
|---|---|
| First Missionary Bishop of Southern Florida | |
 |
|
| Church | Episcopal Church in the United States of America |
| See | Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida |
| In office | 1892-1913 |
| Successor | Cameron Mann II Bishop of Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida & 1st Bishop of South Florida |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1860 |
| Consecration | 1892 |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
September 6, 1835 Lambertville, Hunterdon County, New Jersey |
| Died |
November 14, 1919 Nashville. Davidson County, Tennessee, buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery (Nashville) |
William Crane Gray was the first bishop of the Episcopal Church's Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida, which had been split off from the Episcopal Diocese of Florida in October 1892.
William Crane Gray was born in Lambertville, New Jersey, on September 6, 1835, the son of Joseph Gray and Hannah Price Gray. When he was ten he and his parents moved to Tennessee. In 1859 he graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio and he then went to seminary at Bexley Hall, which was then located in Gambier.
William Crane Gray was ordained to the diaconate in 1859 and to the priesthood in 1860. He served as chaplain of a Tennessee regiment during the Civil War.
After the war, Gray served parishes in Bolivar and Nashville. After two decades as rector of the Church of the Advent in Nashville, he was elected bishop of the new Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida. His consecration was held there.
In south Florida, Bishop Gray found five self-supporting parishes, 40 organized missions and 11 mission stations. Among other churches established during his episcopate was a mission to the Seminoles in Immokalee (in 1898). In 1913, Bishop Edwin Garner Weed of Florida realized that the missionary Southern diocese had grown much more rapidly than the original diocese, due to the expansion of railroad service to Tampa and Key West, and suggested returning Marion and Volusia Counties to the original diocese, but that suggestion failed when only one of the thirteen parishes in the missionary district agreed.
Gray served for 21 years in Florida before submitting his resignation on grounds of ill health in October 1913.
William Crane Gray's first wife was Margaret Locke Trent, whom he married on May 20, 1863. His second wife was Fannie Campbell Bowers, whom he married August 2, 1877. Their son, Campbell Gray born January 6, 1879, later became Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana.
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