LETTERS OF ASA GRAY. 



CHAPTER I. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



1810-1843. 



My great-great-grandfather, John Gray, with his 

 family, among which was Robert Gray, supposed to 

 be one of his sons, emigrated from Londonderry, 

 Ireland, to Worcester, Mass., being part of a Scotch- 

 Irish colony.i The farm they took up was on the 

 north side of what is now Lincoln Street. 



Robert Gray, my great-grandfather, died in Worces- 



1 This colony was composed of rigid Presbyterians, who desired to 

 leave Ireland to escape yarious persecutions. They gent out the 

 Rey. Mr. Boyd, early in 1718, with an address to the Governor of 

 Massachusetts. The address, now in the Archives of the New 

 Hampshire Historical Society, was signed by three hundred and 

 nineteen persons, nine of whom were clergymen. The report brought 

 back by Mr. Boyd of his reception by the governor and of the 

 prospects of the country was so favorable that the addressers con- 

 verted their property into money, and embarked in five ships for 

 Boston, which they reached August 4, 1718. In Boston they sepa- 

 rated for different places, but the larger part were sent to Worcester, 

 then a frontier settlement of fifty-eight dwellings and two hundred 

 inhabitants, but needing a larger population as protection from the 

 Indians. John Gray — there were two of his name in the original 

 party — went to Worcester, where he owned considerable land, and 

 was evidently a man of influence in the colony, to judge from the 

 various public offices held by him. 



