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Mentioned in 'My Dear Comrade Frederickus': Walt Whitman and Fred Gray

The Fred Gray Association

Details about the Fred Gray Association are sketchy at best, and the extant historical documents provide only the most basic details.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

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Fritsch, Hugo (?-1889)

Hugo Fritsch, son of the Austrian consul, was part of the "Fred Gray Association," a group that Ed Folsom and Ken Price characterize as "a loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection" ("Walt Whitman").

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Gray, John Frederick Schiller (1840-1891)

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).

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Kingsley, Charles

Charles Kingsley was one of several men who were associated with the Fred Gray Association, "a loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection" (Folsom & Price “Walt Whitman”). E. Miller explains that “during this period Walt [Whitman] was intimate with a group he called the Fred Gray Association. Not much is known about this circle. Gray, the son of a noted New York physician, took a medical degree after the war. Nathaniel Bloom became a successful merchant. Hugo Fritsch was the son of the Austrian consul.

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