William Bradford Dodge Gray was superintendent of Congregational Missions in Wyoming from 1900 to 1918. He was born in Milbourne, Illinois, in 1846 and named after his grandfather, William Bradford Dodge, the first secretary of the Antislavery Institute at Salem, Massachusetts. After his mother’s death, he was raised by his grandfather and by his maternal aunt, Miss J.D. Dodge, in Lake County, Illinois. In 1867 he married Julia Payne, and they resided in Ivanhoe and in Highland Park, Illinois, where Gray was a farmer and merchant. The couple moved to South Dakota in 1880 and homesteaded in Kingsbury County between Lake Preston and De Smet. In 1890 they moved into Yankton, South Dakota, where W.B.D. Gray was associated with the founding of Yankton College. In 1900 they moved to Cheyenne, when Gray was appointed superintendent of the Home Missionary and Sunday School Society in Wyoming. Julia Gray died in October of that same year. W.B.D. and Julia Gray were the parents of four sons: Burton Payne, a lawyer and judge in Boston; Edward D., a farmer near Yankton; William Steven, who became superintendent of the soldiers’ home in Hot Springs, South Dakota, following a military career; and Charles Nelson of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Gray married Annette Becher, who had previously acted as his assistant, in 1902. Annette Margaret Becher was brought up in Wenona, Illinois. She studied music and attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago (1899-1900), where she first met W.B.D. Gray. She was ordained in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in December, 1900, and became pastor of the South Side Congregational Church in Cheyenne. After her marriage, she traveled extensively through the state as a missionary, often acting as temporary pastor in communities which lacked a permanent minister.
The couple’s missionary work was supported by slide lectures given to audiences in the East on conditions in Wyoming. For this purpose they took many photographs of small communities and rural areas of the state, which were exhibited during winter visits to Boston and other eastern cities. Dr. Gray retired from active service in 1918, and, in 1919, the Grays moved to Denver, Colorado, where W.B.D. Gray died on June 21, 1926. Mildred Kenney (Rost), a friend from Wyoming, came to live with the Grays in 1922 and remained with Annette Becher Gray after Dr. Gray’s death. Annette Becher Gray died in Denver in October, 1936.
From the guide to the W.B.D. and Annette B. Gray Papers, 1835-1986, (University of Wyoming. American Heritage Center.)
