It was with a broad and thorough experience as a merchant and banker that Andrew J. Grayson entered upon his public duties as postmaster at Blanchard following appointment from President Wilson in July, 1913. Practically all his active career has been spent in the Red River country of Northern Texas or in what is now the State of Oklahoma. He is an Oklahoma pioneer and has lived at various points in old Indian Territory and the new state for fully twenty three years. The Grayson family was of Scotch stock and came to Virginia in colonial times. His grandfather, John Grayson, was born in Virginia and more than a century and a quarter ago settled the old Grayson homestead in Madison County, Alabama. It was in that county of Alabama that Andrew J. Grayson was born October 19, 1852. His father, James Gordon Grayson, was born in the same county in 1805 and died there in 1862, having followed farming and stock raising all his active days. He was a democrat in politics. James G. Grayson married Paralee Wright, who was born in Alabama in 1821 and died in 1876. Their children were: J. W., who is now seventy-seven, years of age, is still living as a farmer in Madison County, Alabama, and has been quite prominent as a citizen and as a member of the State Legislature; C. A. Grayson, who occupies a part of the old homestead in Alabama; A. C. Grayson, a farmer in Madison County; Fannie, of Waxahachie, Texas, widow of Robert King, a farmer; Emma Polk, who married David Allison, a farmer in Madison County, Alabama; and Andrew J. Andrew J. Grayson as a boy attended the public schools in Madison County, Alabama, and in 1872 completed his early education in the high school at Summit, Blount County, Alabama. Then until 1876 he remained on his father’s Alabama plantation and then farmed independently in that community for three years. In 1879 Mr. Grayson moved to Northern Texas, was a farmer in Cooke County for three years, and in 1882 entered the service of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad at Denison, Texas. He was a railroad man four years and for two years conducted a grocery business at Denison. The next four years were spent in the furniture and grocery business at Wolf City, Texas. It was in 1892 that Mr. Grayson identified himself with what is now the State of Oklahoma, locating at Ardmore, Indian Territory, where for two years he was furniture dealer and undertaker. The same business he continued at Tecumseh, Oklahoma, for seven years, and in 1901 moved to Earlsboro, where he became active as a banker and for six years was president of the Bank of Earlsboro. The Town of Blanchard was founded in 1907, the year of statehood, and Mr. Grayson has been one of the prominent factors in its development since the beginning. He established the principal furniture and undertaking business, and still continues the undertaking line in addition to his public duties as postmaster. He has done much other public service for this young town, having served two years as a member of the town council and four years as a member of the school hoard. He is a democrat, a member of the Presbyterian Church, and for the past twenty years has been affiliated with the Ancient Order of United Workmen at Chickasha. In Madison County, Alabama, in 1873, Mr. Grayson married Miss Eugenia E. Wade. Her father was Robert Wade, a farmer in that county. They have two children: Russia, wife of A. E. Nelson, a cotton broker at Altus, Oklahoma; and Leonard W., who is connected with the Neil P. Anderson Cotton Company at Wichita Falls, Texas, and who married Miss Ruby Van Vactor of Elk City, Oklahoma.
Source: Thoburn, Joseph Bradfield, A Standard History of Oklahoma, vol. 4; Published by the American Historical Society, 1916.