Fred Gray Association, The

*Note: This biographical profile is currently under construction.*

Details about the Fred Gray Association are sketchy at best, and the extant historical documents provide only the most basic details. Ed Folsom and Ken Price characterize the group as "a loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection" (Re-Scripting 62). Members of the group included Walt Whitman, Nat Bloom, and Frederick Schiller Gray (after whom the group seems to have been named), Nat Gray, Charles Kingsley, Charles Chauncey, Hugo Fritsch, Fred Vaughan, a man known only as "Perkins" and someone referred to as "Raymond" that may be Henry J. Raymond. In Calamus Lovers, Charley Shiveley asserts that Fred Vaughan, in particular, was the man "who formed the prototype for Whitman's future lovers" (14). He goes on to suggest that Whitman wrote the Calamus sequence in Leaves of Grass for Vaughan (14). Shiveley does not mention the Fred Gray Association by name, but he does indicate that they "met in the semi-gay bar Pfaff's" (40).

Shiveley's contentions correspond with one of the few confirmed details about the Fred Gray Association, which is that the men congregated at Pfaff's. Whitman's letters speak of the group's adventures while "wandering the east side of the city […] in the lager beer saloons" (Allen 316). In Whitman's memories of Pfaff's, his evenings with the Fred Gray Association "conjure[d] up animation, hilarity and 'sparkle'" (Stansell 118).

References & Biographical Resources

Allen, Gay Wilson. The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman. New York: MacMillan, 1955. [more about this work]: Allen quotes a letter from September 11, 1864, from Whitman to William O'Connor about his trip to New York. In this letter, he writes of his "amusements" that "last night I was with some of my friends of Fred Gray association, till late wandering the east side of the city first in the lager beer saloons & then elsewhere" (316). [pages: 316]
Charley Shiveley, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987. [more about this work]: Shiveley doesn't mention the group by name, but he goes into great detail about Whitman's relationship with one of the group's members: Fred Vaughan.
Folsom, Ed and Kenneth M. Price. Re-Scripting Walt Whitman: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. [more about this work]: "A loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection." [pages: 62]
Folsom, Ed and Kenneth M. Price. "Walt Whitman." The Walt Whitman Archive. http://www.whitmanarchive.org, 2006. [more about this work]: It was at Pfaff’s," write Folsom and Price, "that Whitman joined the 'Fred Gray Association,' a loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection."
Morris, Roy Jr. The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. [more about this work]: Suggests that the group is named after a physician's son, Frederick Schiller Gray. Members included Frederick's brother Nat, Charles Chauncey, Charles Kingsley (an athlete), and Hugo Fritsch. [pages: 38, 187]
Stansell, Christine. "Whitman at Pfaff's: Commercial Culture, Literary Life and New York Bohemia at Mid-Century." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 10.3 (1993): 107-126. [more about this work]: Stansell writes that at Pfaff's Whitman "regularly socialized with a group of young male friends -- 'the beautiful young men?' -- dubbed the 'Fred Gray Association' after one of their principals" (107).

Stansell writes that in Whitman's memories of Pfaff's, his evenings with the Fred Gray Association "conjures up animation, hilarity and 'sparkle'" (118). [pages: 107,111,118]
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1860. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1860. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1860. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1860. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1860. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1860. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1860. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1862. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1874. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. 1874. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Vaughan, Frederick B. Letter to Walt Whitman. circa 1872. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Vaughn were core members of the group.
Whitman, Walt. The Correspondence of Walt Whitman: Volume I, 1842-1867. Ed. Edwin Haviland Miller. New York: New York University Press, 1961. [more about this work]
Whitman, Walt. Letter to Hugo Fritsch. 1863. 123-124. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Fritsch were core members of the group.
Whitman, Walt. Letter to Hugo Fritsch. 1863. 158-160. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Fritsch were core members of the group.
Whitman, Walt. Letter to Hugo Fritsch. 1863. 125-127. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Fritsch were core members of the group.
Whitman, Walt. Letter to Hugo Fritsch. 1863. 158-160. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Fritsch were core members of the group.
Whitman, Walt. Letter to Nathaniel Bloom. 1863. 141-143. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Bloom were core members of the group.
Whitman, Walt. Letter to Nathaniel Bloom. 1863. 141-143. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but both Whitman and Bloom were core members of the group.
Whitman, Walt. Letter to Nathaniel Bloom and John F.S. Gray. 1863. 80-85. [more about this work]: The Fred Gray Association is not specifically mentioned in this letter, but Whitman, Bloom and Gray were core members of the group.