William Grayson the First Member of Congress to Die in Office

 

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, William Grayson served as a captain of the local militia but left the Virginia forces to become an aide-de-camp to General Washington. He later took command of one of the sixteen regiments of the Continental Army. After a bloody battle at Monmouth, New Jersey that virtually destroyed his entire regiment, Grayson, now a Colonel, went on to serve on the Board of War. After the war, Grayson served as a member of the Continental Congress and was later one of Virginia’s first two Senators. 

 Grayson died in Dumfries on March 12, 1790, the first member of the United States Congress to die in office. He was interred in the Grayson family vault in Woodbridge, Virginia on a hill overlooking Marumsco Creek. The family burial vault was originally located on a one-thousand-acre plantation. Now less than five acres remain undeveloped. The burial vault, now sitting in the midst of a Woodbridge residential neighborhood, was encased in concrete in the early 1900s by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Reverend Spence Grayson, a “fighting parson” of the Revolution and lifelong friend of George Washington is also buried in the vault.

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