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I thought we were finished up with stories of the Wray family until I was contacted by Darcy Starkweather Bridgeman. Darcy had grown up on Richard Wray’s farm on English Prairie Road and said there is one more story I needed to tell, and I agreed!
The story starts with John Wray, the last child born to Thomas and Alice Midgley Wray in October 1833 in White Pigeon, Michigan. Alice was pregnant with him at the time of their voyage from England and she died soon after his birth in 1834. Thomas and his children left Michigan in 1836 and settled in Burton Township.
As we learned before, they homesteaded on Richardson Road. Twenty-six years later, the 1862 McHenry County map shows John’s name on a parcel just north of his father’s homestead. On January 22, 1861, John married Ella L. Gibbs. They had three sons: John Frank Wray, born in 1865, Fred Wray born in 1867 and Guy Wray born in 1872.
Ella’s parents, Herman and Sarah Gibbs, owned the Richmond House hotel located on the southeast corner of Main Street and Broadway in Richmond. In 1866, the barn/livery stable connected with the hotel caught on fire and could have easily taken the hotel and whole town with it. Most of the horses got out, but some perished, along with a cow, carriages and a peddler’s stock of goods. Luckily the hotel was saved, and it was reported “the loss of the barn won’t hurt Col. Gibbs (Herman) any; he is good for a dozen such barns”.
On Sunday morning, May 8, 1870, John & Ella’s youngest son, Fred, died very suddenly, being sick just a few hours. "The old must die, the young may die", said the paper. Three months later, the August 1870 census shows John, Ella, and son, John Frank, living in The Richmond House hotel, along with their in-laws, eight boarders and three hotel workers. John’s occupation was listed as “Hotel Keeper”. (His niece, Mary Imeson, worked there as a waiter and her sister, Fanny, worked as a cook).
Guy was born two years later in 1872. Ella died suddenly on February 25, 1875, at age 32 of puerperal fever, an infection following childbirth or miscarriage. “No person in Richmond would be more missed or sincerely mourned”, wrote the obituary writer. A few weeks later her father, Herman Gibbs, died on March 9, 1875. In 1877, his wife, Sarah Gibbs, “guardian of John F. Wray and Guy G. Wray [her grandsons]”, put the hotel up for sale in a “Guardian Sale of Real Estate”.
The 1880 census shows John’s living as a farm laborer in Richmond, living with his two sons, Mother-in-law, Thomas Bower and Ella Bower.
John married again on February 13, 1885, to Emma E. Wilcox (who may have been Ella's cousin from New York). He was 51 and she was 26. They had a daughter, Rita, born on May 5, 1885, just three months later. In March of 1886, John was to “take charge” of the Exchange Hotel in Burlington, Wisconsin and it was thought that “Jack” would make the Exchange “an abundant success”.
Later that fall, on September 9, 1886, Guy, died at age 15, after an illness of two weeks. His death “caused a shadow to creep into many a heart In Richmond …how many lives he would have brightened if Death had not gently taken his hand and chilled his heart”, read his obituary in part.
Emma gave birth one more time to a son, Richard T. in February 1887.
By 1899, John had a furniture and undertaking establishment with a partner in Richmond. Emma died in 1903 of pneumonia at age 44. Then John died in 1905 at age 72. Here is where the story takes a strange turn.
In 1876, it was reported, “the finest monument, probably, in this part of the state” was erected in the Gibbs’ family lot in the Richmond Cemetery. Rising 17 feet high, it was “surmounted by an urn of chase design and exquisite workmanship.” The west side was inscribed “Gibbs” and the south side, “Wray”. Buried there were Herman and Sarah Gibbs, (and other family members), John Wray, his two wives, and two of his sons, Fred & Guy. The Wrays each have their own little headstone, but one stone is missing…
Flash forward to the 1970s…a headstone, found in Lakemoor, a dozen miles from McHenry County, and bearing the name Wray was brought into the McHenry County Historical Society. Assuming the stone was from the Wray-Imeson Cemetery on Richardson Road, the stone was first brought to the Richardson barn, where it stayed for many years before being eventually placed in the Wray Cemetery across the street.
The headstone is carved, “Guy Wray - Died September 9, 1886 - Age 15”. The photo above shows the Wray family headstones in front of the Gibbs granite monument with the names: Emma, (a missing stone), Fred (stone laying on the ground), Ella (stone laying on the ground), and John. Cemetery records show the missing stone is Guy’s.
After almost 150 years, the Gibbs monument is still the largest in the cemetery (and maybe even "this part of the state") and thanks to Darcy’s research, we hope to get Guy’s stone moved back to its rightful place next to his family members in front of it.
Story by Laura Frumet
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