Peter W. Grayson

The Handbook of Texas shows Grayson at work as an envoy. It says his plantation near Matagorda was worked by many enslaved people. In late 1834 he and Spencer H. Jack went to Mexico City to win Stephen F. Austin's release. David Burnet named him attorney general on May 4, 1836, and soon after the Velasco treaties he and James Collinsworth were sent to Washington to seek recognition and annexation, arriving July 8. In August 1837 Houston sent him back as special envoy, and in December made him naval agent to the United States.

What the plaque says

Peter W. Grayson Peter Wagener Grayson was born in 1788 in Bardstown, Virginia (later part of Kentucky) to Benjamin and Caroline (Taylor) Grayson, members of a politically prominent family. He served in the War of 1812 and worked in Louisville as an attorney, businessman and legislator. Well-spoken in legal matters and also a poet, he nevertheless amassed substantial debts and privately combated mental illness. In 1830, Grayson wrote to Stephen F. Austin about acquiring land in Texas, and by 1832 he had established a plantation near Matagorda. He also became a friend and advisor to Austin. During Austin's imprisonment in Mexico City in 1834, Grayson and Spencer Jack went there with petitions in hopes of freeing the empresario. In December 1834, they secured Austin's bail, although he was not free to leave until the following summer. Settlers began preparations for revolution soon after Austin returned to Texas, and Grayson worked with him to outline an independent government. Grayson also served as president of the Council of War and aide-de-camp to both Austin and Gen. Edward Burleson. After Texas' victory at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, Grayson acted as interpreter and Attorney General, signing the Treaties of Velasco on May 14, 1836. Grayson went with others to Washington, D.C. to gain recognition of the Texas Republic and discuss annexation to the United States, but the efforts were unsuccessful. He served as Texas Attorney General and as naval agent, and was Sam Houston's candidate for the Texas presidency in 1838. On July 9 of that year, though, while traveling through Tennessee, Grayson took his life, leaving a note that has previous mental illness had returned. In 1846, following the eventful annexation of Texas to the United States, the Texas Legislature created Grayson County, naming it for the Texas patriot. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 8.9 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Eisenhower State Park — 12 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.

More markers nearby

• Grayson County — steps away
• Home County of Allison Mayfield, Conservationist — steps away
• Ninth Texas Cavalry — steps away
• President T. Roosevelt's Visit to Grayson County — steps away