Bio of GRAY, Fred L. (b.1866), Hennepin Co., MN
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EXTRACTED FROM: History of Minneapolis, Gateway to the Northwest; 
Chicago-Minneapolis, The S J Clarke Publishing Co, 1923; Edited by: Rev. 
Marion Daniel Shutter, D.D., LL.D.; Volume I - Shutter (Historical); 
volume II - Biographical; volume III - Biographical

FRED L. GRAY - Vol III, pg 766-769
It is now thirty-three years since Fred L. Gray, a young easterner who had taken
Horace Greeley's advice and had come west, hung out his shingle as an in­surance
agent in Minneapolis. His "office" consisted of desk room with a real estate
firm, then located at No. 13 Washington avenue North and his "organization"
con­sisted mainly of himself. Today the establishment thus modestly founded
gives em­ployment to a staff of fifty-five people, has supervision over a field
force of some six hundred sub-agents and requires most of the third floor of the
Security building to house its needs. The Fred L. Gray Company, of which the
subject of this sketch is president, and of which C. H. Van Campen, A. F. Decker
and W. S. McCartney are vice presidents and W. H. Marsh, secretary-treasurer, is
reputed to be the largest institution of its kind in the Northwest, while in
national insurance circles it is recognized as one of the leading and best
equipped general agencies in the country.
Mr. Gray was born at Riceville, Crawford county, Pennsylvania, on the 18th of
January, 1866, the son of John Wesley and Mary Adelia Gray, who came of old
Methodist-Abolitionist stock and who were close friends of the martyred John
Brown. Fred L. Gray's early education was derived from the "little red
schoolhouse" and from a partial course at Allegheny College in Meadville. Like
many another lad he experimented with a variety of vocations before finding his
real bent. As a youth of sixteen he taught school; at seventeen he sold carpet
sweepers from house to house; at eighteen he became a telegraph operator; his
twenty-first year found him working for the Pennsylvania railroad as a freight
clerk in New York city and supplementing his meagre salary in that position by
employment as a pipe organist in a Jersey City church. In 1889 he quit the
railroad business to go to Boston as an insurance solicitor for the well known
brokerage firm of John C. Paige & Co., and his marked success in that field
brought him the opportunity to represent a large eastern casualty company in
Minneapolis.
Despite the exacting demands of his steadily expanding business Mr. Gray has
always given liberally of his time and means to aid in the solution of the
larger problems of his chosen profession. In 1914 he was elected president of
the Insurance Federation of America and he now holds the same office with the
Casualty Information Clearing House of Chicago, both of which country-wide
organizations are devoted to the furtherance of sound insurance principles and
the support of legitimate insurance institutions. While he has no taste for
active political life Mr. Gray has always been keenly interested in public
affairs, particularly in everything pertaining to good government and to the
promotion of American ideals. He is a director and vice president of the
Minneapolis Civic & Commerce Association, and during the World war was a member
of the executive committee of the Minneapolis Liberty Loan organization. In 1917
he acted as Hennepin County chairman of the Red Cross campaign and in 1918 he
was campaign manager of the Minneapolis "War Chest," which contributed more than
three million dollars to overseas relief and to local charities and which paved
the way for the present Minneapolis Community Fund. These things, however, Mr.
Gray recalls with much less satisfaction than the fact that every one of the
sixteen young men in the employ of his firm who were of draft age when America
entered the war, volunteered for service without waiting to be called.
Mr. Gray was married in Chicago, on December 18, 1907, to Mrs. Louise Barge
Mann, and he has one son, Arthur M. Gray of Minneapolis. A stepson, Edward E.
Mann, lives in Los Angeles.
Mr. Gray is a member of the Minneapolis Club, the Minneapolis Athletic Club, the
Minneapolis Golf Club, the Minneapolis Automobile Club, Long Meadow Gun Club,
Minneapolis Kiwanis Club and the Six O'clock Club of Minneapolis. He is a
thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, a member of the Shrine (Zuhrah Temple)
of the B. P. O. E., and of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. His church
affiliations are with the Methodist denomination and in politics he usually is a
stanch supporter of republican platforms and candidates.