A brief history of the Gray
Marine Motor Company
O. J. Mulford was born in Monroe, Michigan in 1868. A few years later the family moved, first to Indiana, then to Stanton, Michigan. The father was a lumberman, and lumber was still being cut in the great pine forests of northern Michigan. As a boy, O. J. Mulford began to learn the printing trade, working in a print shop in Stanton. He continued in school after the family moved to Detroit and worked in a commercial printing shop part time. He then acquired a print shop of his own.