Benjamin Grayson Sr. became a successful merchant and planter, as well as militia officer and (by 1731) one of the justices of the peace (who jointly governed the vast county of that day, in addition to their judicial duties).

Their mother, twice-widowed, had been born to an important family upriver in Westmoreland County and had children by her previous marriages to Charles Tyler and William Linton (also a Scottish-born merchant).

William was sixteen when his father died, so his eldest brother (Benjamin Grayson Jr.) became his legal guardian until he reached 21 years.

However, William was well-provided for from the personal estate (which required a 10,000 bond), especially compared to his future commander, George Washington (whose far smaller inheritance caused him to earn a living by surveying beginning as a teenager).

The other, Belle Aire (often confused with a plantation about five miles inland with the same pronunciation but the name Bel Air which was owned and operated by the Ewell family) was between the Occoquan River and Neabsco Creek near the ferry (later bridge) conducting the King's Highway across the Occoquan River and which became Woodbridge, Virginia.

It had been the property of William Linton a previous husband of this man's mother, Susan, who married Benjamin Grayson by 1732.

William Grayson received his first schooling locally under Charles Tyler,[7] and later became known for familiarity with Latin and Greek as well as English history.

The wealthiest planter families (who could hire lawyers to protect their interests) owned land in both counties, and often held positions on church vestries, responsible for social welfare activities, including caring for orphans and the poor.

He was on various Committees of Correspondence and military preparedness, as did nearby planters, including Richard Henry Lee with whom he would serve as the inaugural U.S.

[15] In the winter of 1777-78, he led his troops to Valley Forge,[16] where they suffered privations, and emerged in the spring with considerably fewer men fit for service.

In Scott's absence, Colonel Grayson took temporary command of the brigade, which was in the vanguard of an assault as part of Charles Lee's Advance Guard.

In that Convention, Grayson argued that the proposed constitution was neither fish nor fowl—neither strong enough for a national government nor decentralized enough for a federal one — and thus eventually would either degenerate into a despotism or result in the dissolution of the Union.

Grayson experienced the inflation caused by Virginia and other states issuing paper fiat currency during the Revolutionary War.

He later wrote to James Madison that: The Ancients were surely men of more candor than We are; they contended openly for an abolition of debts in so many Words, while we strive as hard for the same thing under the decent and specious pretense of a circulating medium.

He and Richard Henry Lee were the only members of the first Senate who had opposed ratification, and so they were unhappy when the Bill of Rights omitted any provisions making serious corrections to the division of powers between the central government and the states.

He hand wrote a will shortly before his death which appointed executors and charged them to make "all my slaves born since Independance [sic] of America Free", which will was admitted to probate in Frederick County, despite some difficulties with the court clerk, on December 7, 1790.

The estate of Richard Stonnell (who had owned the property and died in 1857) was finally settled though special chancery commissioner Eppa Hunton Jr. in 1887, with S.B.