William Gray (1854-1937) was born near Gawler, South Australia. He obtained his BA from Adelaide University and graduated in divinity from Union College in 1880, the first Presbyterian student to complete the course. He spent 1881, the year of his ordination, in medical training at Adelaide Hospital and as Minister to the congregations of Goodwood and Mount Barker. He married Elizabeth McEwen in 1882 and shortly after they sailed for Weasisi, Tanna, New Hebrides in the <I>Dayspring</I>. Gray was the first Presbyterian Church of South Australia missionary to the New Hebrides. He produced a grammar, primer, hymnal and translation of Luke's Gospel in the Tanna language. At the age of 71 Gray became head of the Smith of Dunsek Presbyterian Mission which later became the nucleus of John Flynn's Australian Inland Mission. See also PMB 1046, 1047 and 1048.

Rev Gray's manuscripts, phamphlets and press cuttings on the labour traffic; copies of some annual reports of the Queensland Kanaka Mission and the Queensland Department of Pacific Island Immigration; pamphlets by J G Paton, A C Smith and J Inglis 1915; William Watt Erskine's recollections of his childhood on Tanna, lantern slides and photographs of missionary life in the New Hebrides, 1880s. <P> <b>See reel list for further details</b>.