Biography

Alexander Gray 1845 1923

Alexander Gray was a publican and the first Pipe Major of the Dunedin Pipe Band. He was born in Aberdeenshire in 1845 and had worked as a post boy for Queen Victoria when she was staying at Balmoral. He travelled through California in 1870 and arrived in New Zealand in 1871, settling in Dunedin the following year. For seven years Gray was a mounted constable, acting as an escort from the Central Otago gold diggings. After two years he became a warder at the Dunedin Gaol then, in the 1880s and 1890s, he ran a successful ironmongery business in Hillside Road. Afterwards Gray went into the pub trade and he was particularly associated with the Oban Hotel in the Octagon and the Prince of Wales Hotel in Princes St. In 1897 Gray was a founder of the Dunedin Pipe Band and he was its sole instructor for three and a half years. He was Pipe Major at all of the patriotic functions held in Dunedin in association with the Boer War. He was also a violinist, and played in the principal orchestra in Dunedin at that time, the Dunedin Orchestral Society. Alexander Gray died in 1923 at the age of 78. He was survived by Isabella, his wife of 37 years.

Sources:
Cyclopedia of New Zealand (1905)
Otago Daily Times, 17 November 1923