Thomas Ruffin Gray

Thomas Ruffin Gray (1800 – ?) was an attorney who represented several enslaved people during the trials in the wake of Nat Turner's slave rebellion.

Early life

Thomas Ruffin Gray was born in 1800 in Southampton County, Virginia. He graduated from the College of William & Mary.

Career

Gray was a lawyer. Although he is commonly thought of as Nat Turner's lawyer, James Strange French is the person listed in official records as Turner's lawyer.[1] Neither assertion is correct: William C. Parker was assigned by the court to represent Nat.[2][3] Though educated in law at William and Mary early in life, he had only recently begun practicing law. There is some speculation that he had lost much of his property through gambling and that is what caused him to begin practicing law, which appears to be confirmed in a pamphlet Gray prepared discussing a dispute with a Southampton County physician, Orris A. Browne.[4] There is also recent speculation on Gray's relationship with a well-known gambler in Virginia.[5]

Gray published The Confessions of Nat Turner, which purports to be Turner's confession and account of his life leading up the rebellion, as well as an account of Turner's motives and actions during the rebellion.[6]

Legacy

In the 1960s, William Styron published a fictional and controversial account of the Nat Turner rebellion using the same title as Gray's pamphlet, The Confessions of Nat Turner.

References
  1. Brophy, Alfred L. (June 2013). "The Nat Turner Trials". North Carolina Law Review. 91: 1817–1880. Archived from the original on 2016-04-07. Retrieved 2020-07-23.
  2. Southampton Co., VA, Court Minute Book 1830-1835. pp. 121–123. Archived from the original on 2017-11-11. Retrieved 2018-04-27.
  3. Proceedings on the Southampton Insurrection, Aug-Nov 1831, archived from the original on 2016-08-25, retrieved 2018-04-27
  4. David F. Allemdinger, Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton (2014).
  5. Alfred L. Brophy, "The Nat Turner Trials" Archived 2016-04-07 at the Wayback Machine, North Carolina Law Review (June 2013), Volume 91: 1817-80.
  6. French, Scot A. "The Confessions of Nat Turner". Encyclopedia of Virginia. Archived from the original on 2013-05-30. Retrieved 2013-08-21.
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