About Inductee

Nearly 141 years after his birth in Gurley, 120 years after he played on the University of Alabamas first varsity football team, and 65 years after his death in Huntsville, David Allison Grayson joins the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fames class of 2012. Born in 1871 when Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States, Grayson was educated in the rural schools of Madison County and then attended the state university in Tuscaloosa, where he received a BA in 1893 and a law degree the following year. He opened a law office in Huntsville in 1894 and continued his practice for the next 53 years until his death in 1947. For the last 11 years of his life, Grayson was referee in bankruptcy cases for 10 northern Alabama counties. As a college student, he was voted the top player on Alabamas first two football teams in 1892-93. Among his handful of teammates were William Bankhead, a future Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1936-40), and Bibb Graves, a future two-time governor of Alabama. Alabama played its first game on Nov. 11, 1892 at Lakeview Park in Birmingham, a 56-0 win over Birmingham High School. Grayson scored Alabamas first touchdown on a 75-yard run, after which the team lifted him on its collective shoulders and carried him around the field. The next day, Alabama lost 5-4 to Birmingham Athletic Club, and later fell 32-22 to Auburn on Feb. 22, 1893, in a game considered part of the 1892 season. Grayson, who played football in 1892 and 1993, received a gold medal as the top athlete at the university during those years. According to family history, Graysons father, former Confederate officer J. W. Grayson, made sure all his children were college graduates in an era when few people attended college. David was the fourth of J. W. and Sarah Graysons 13 children. Davids first wife, Nannette Dubose, died in 1903, just three years after their marriage. David later married Juliet Whitthorne of Shelbyville, Tenn. They had one child, Juliet. I believe my grandfather went off to the University of Virginia before coming to Alabama to study law, says Graysons granddaughter, Mrs. Julie Hart of Washington, D.C. Its my unsubstantiated theory that he picked up football at Virginia and helped introduce it to Alabama. My grandfather was truly a scholar of law. He was known as the best legal mind in Huntsville. David Grayson was one of the citys most renowned civic leaders of his era. He was a longtime chairman of Madison Countys Democratic Party committee, and for many years he was the treasurer and a key supporter of Alabama A&M.