William Grayson (1742 – March 12, 1790) was a planter, lawyer and statesman from Virginia. After leading a Virginia regiment in the Continental Army, Grayson served in the Virginia House of Delegates before becoming one of the first two U.S. Senators from Virginia, as well as a leader of the Anti-Federalist faction. Grayson became the first member of the United States Congress to die while holding office. Early and family life Grayson was born in 1742 to Benjamin and Susannah (Monroe) Grayson at Belle Aire Plantation. in what is now Woodbridge, Virginia. His father had emigrated from Scotland to the confluence of the Potomac River and Quantico Creek which became Dumfries, Virginia. Benjamin Grayson Sr. became a successful merchant and planter, as well as militia officer and (by 1731) one of the justices of the peace (who jointly governed the vast county of that day, in addition to their judicial duties). Their mother, twice-widowed, had been born to an important family upriver in Westmoreland County and had children by her previous marriages to Charles Tyler and William Linton (also a Scottish-born merchant). One of her nephews, James Monroe, would later serve in the Continental Army, succeed this man as U.S. Senator from Virginia and became President of the United States. Susanna Grayson bore three sons (Spence, Benjamin Jr. and William) and a daughter (also Susanna) in this marriage before she died in 1752, when this boy was ten. His father remarried, to another widow, Sarah Ball Ewell, who also had children by prior marriage, but none in this marriage before her husband died in 1757. William was sixteen when his father died, so his eldest brother (Benjamin Grayson Jr.) became his legal guardian until he reached 21 years. Benjamin Grayson Jr. and Spence Grayson, being the elder brothers, inherited their father's business and plantations approximating 2,800 acres in Prince William County, by a will drafted in 1753 which was admitted to probate in 1758 but no longer exists. However, William was well-provided for from the personal estate (which required a 10,000 bond), especially compared to his future commander, George Washington (whose far smaller inheritance caused him to earn a living by surveying beginning as a teenager). One of the Grayson plantations included a house on a hill above Dumfries that became known as "Grayson's Hill" and later "Battery Hill" (for a Confederate battery during the American Civil War). The other,