"Our beloved Colonel, Edmund B. Gray, was born at Canton, N.Y., on the 17th day of June, A.D. 1825, and was educated at White Pigeon, Michigan, and at the University of Vermont, situated in the city of Burlington. He was engaged as instructor and superintendent of schools in Michigan and Indiana for many years, and it was as manager for publishers of schoolbooks in the Northwest that he came first to Wisconsin in 1855. In April, 1861, while Superintendent of schools at Sheboygan, he enlisted in the war for the Union. He entered the service as Captain of Company C, the fourth Wisconsin Infantry, which was subsequently transferred into the Cavalry service, in which branch of the service he spent the time in Maryland and Virginia, until March, 1862, when, with his regiment, he went south with the Butler expedition against New Orleans. In April, 1862, he resigned his commission, owing to ill health, and came home, but his patriotic spirit could not long endure inactivity when his country was in danger, and in July, 1862, he accepted a commission as Major of the twenty-eighth Wisconsin Infantry, and in that capacity, and as Lieutenant Colonel and as Colonel, he continued in command of the said regiment until the close of the war."

Col. Gray died July 8, 1906 and was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago.