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Mentioned in Letter to Nathaniel Bloom and John F.S. Gray

Little is known about Nat Bloom outside of his affiliation with what was known as the "Fred Gray Association," a group of young men at Pfaff's whom Ed Folsom and Ken Price characterize as "a loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection" (Re-Scripting 62).

Details about the Fred Gray Association are sketchy at best, and the extant historical documents provide only the most basic details.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).

Fred Gray, the son of prominent New York doctor Dr. John F. Gray and Elizabeth Hull-Gray, was born in New York in 1840. His two siblings died before they reached adulthood. Gray enrolled in William’s College in Massachusetts in 1858, studying science and medicine and eager to follow in his father’s esteemed footsteps. He studied in Germany at the University of Heidelberg from 1860 to 1861, but left before finishing his degree to serve in the Union army (Blalock 52).