45

1763 Massachusetts-Bay Broadside Tax Warrant Signed by Harrison Gray, Treasurer

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:500.00 USD Estimated At:800.00 - 1,000.00 USD
1763 Massachusetts-Bay Broadside Tax Warrant Signed by Harrison Gray, Treasurer
Colonial America
1763 Massachussetts-Bay Harrison Gray Signed Broadside French & Indian War Period Official Tax Apportionment
November 2, 1763-Dated French & Indian War Period, Massachusetts-Bay Broadside Printed Document Signed, “H(arrison) Gray” as Treasurer, Tax Apportionment Warrant, Fine.
This rare original Printed Broadside Document is French & Indian War dated 1763. It is a Treasury Warrant to the Town of Douglas, Massachusetts for an apportionment of Fifty Thousand Pounds to be collected by Jedediah Bigelow. Douglas is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts. The name Douglas was given in 1746, when Dr. William Douglas, an eminent physician of Boston, in consideration of the privilege of naming the township offered the inhabitants the sum of $500. as a fund for the establishment of free schools together with a tract of 30 acres of land with a dwelling house and barn thereon. This historic Treasury Broadside is 1 page, measuring a large 12.25” x 15” being Signed at bottom by Harrison Gray as Receiver General of the Treasury. Document is in worn and used condition, the middle fold archivally sealed on the blank reverse, having edge faults and some central paper loss at three fold intersections affecting some words. Overall, an ornately designed and impressive scarce original Document regarding the collecting a rather massive amount of funds to cover the expenses of the ongoing French and Indian War.


Harrison Gray (1711-1794) was a wealthy merchant, as well as Treasurer and Receiver-General for the Province of Massachusetts Bay, a position that he held from 1753 until the beginning of the Revolution.

Although more of a political moderate, in 1774, Gray was forced to choose between patriotism and loyalism over the Massachusetts Government Act (which suspended the Provincial Charter). Gray chose to recognize the right of the King and Parliament to suspend, at will, the rights and liberties of Massachusetts Bay. In 1775, Gray published his loyalist views in a pamphlet titled The Two Congresses Cut Up. Ultimately, Gray's property was confiscated and he was forced to flee Boston in 1776 where he spent the rest of his life in London, England.

SEE: History of the town of Douglas, (Massachusetts,) from the earlies period to the close of 1878 by Emerson, William Andres, 1851- , Published 1879