Edwin Fairfax Gray

Gray came to Texas in the winter of 1838 and as a Texas Navy midshipman took part in the Tampico expedition aboard the flagship Austin. Transferred to the United States Navy at annexation, he graduated with honors from Annapolis in June 1852 and sailed with Commodore Matthew Galbraith Perry to Japan in 1853. He resigned in January 1858 and that September became Texas state engineer, supervising river improvements and inspecting railroads. In 1860 he was secretary and treasurer of the Houston Tap and Brazoria, and after the war he certified railroad construction for land grants.

What the plaque says

Edwin Fairfax Gray Midshipman in the Texas Navy, 1841. Lieutenant in the U. S. Navy, 1857. Lieutenant Colonel, 4th Texas Infantry C. S. A., 1862-65. Born in Fredericksburg, Virginia March 15, 1829; Died, Aug. 19, 1884

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 1.0 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.0 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• The Menil Collection — 2.0 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 2.1 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Irvin Capers Lord — steps away
• Caspar Braun — steps away
• Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church — 0.5 mi
• John Kirby Allen — 0.7 mi