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Old Chester, PA: Biographical Sketches

William Gray Price


William Gray Price

Contributed by Anne Broomall Wiegle,
awiegle@fast.net.

Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania, Volumes I-III
Price Family

William Gray Price, son of Major Samuel A. and Sarah (Bickham) Price, was born at Chester, March 4, 1828. He was reared in Chester, and he attended the public schools of that city and Philadelphia. His first occupation was that of clerk in a general store at Rockdale, and later he occupied a similar position in a large mercantile establishment in Chester. In 1849, during the gold excitement, he sailed on the brig "Meteor" via Cape Horn, for Valparaiso, Chili, where he was employed for two years as cashier in the English house of Ravenscroft Hermanos, and from thence went to San Francisco, California, where he joined a prospecting party and was one of the original discoverers of Salmon River and Gold Bluff. He was also one of a party to prospect on Queen Charlotte's Island, British America, and other points along the British Coast. He returned to the United States in 1854, via Cape Horn, and in the autumn of that year began the manufacture of brick in Chester. In 1863, prior to the battle of Gettysburg, he served three months as second lieutenant of Company A, Thirty-seventh Emergency Regiment, and again, in the emergency call before the battle of Antietam, as second lieutenant of Company K, Tenth Emergency Regiment. In 1869 he was appointed postmaster of Chester by President Grant, and filled that position until 1872. He served continuously for nine years as a member of the city council, and during his first term was one of the South Ward commissioners, who superintended the construction of the present water works of Chester. He was a Republican in politics, and prominently connected with the Royal Arcanum.

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Note: I think the above was written before his death. He married Jane Elizabeth Campbell and had three children: William Gray Price, Jr., Edward A. Price, and Howard G. Price.
-ABW


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