William Potter Grier, the only son of 1813 Dickinson College graduate Supreme Court Justice Robert Cooper Grier and his wife, Isabelle, was a military doctor in the Regular Army being transported with his unit on the riverboat Miami when it exploded. Sitting with a group of officers around a stove aboard the steamer, he and the others reportedly bore the brunt of the boiler explosion below decks and were never seen again. William Grier was thirty-two years old. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
"Obituaries," The American Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events 0f the Year 1866 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873), 556.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Personal
