Early Businesses, Cabin #15

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The town lying just 7 miles north of Wildcatter Ranch took its name from its founders, E.S. and G.A. Graham. Their story is my story too as I am the great granddaughter of E.S. Graham. I was privileged to grow up in that lovely town of only 9,000. It sits in a little valley near the Salt Creek of the Brazos and to this day is an oasis in a complicated and busy world.

I am linked to these fine people and believe it is my duty to share their story and an honor to try to be worthy of it. Daniel Webster said it this way, “It is wise for us to recur to the history of our ancestors. Those who do not look upon themselves as a link connecting the Past and the Future, do not perform their duty to the world.”

I have to thank Mary Ruth Millis for the work she did several years ago in compiling the Graham Family History in her book, A Graham Chronicle. I have also used portions of the Young County Historical Committee’s, Graham Centennial History, 100 Years of Progress From Salt Works to Space Age to help me tell the story. Of course, many family members and friends have shared stories with me about the Graham family. The greatest story teller of them all was my grandmother, Anna Bertha Graham Street.

John Graham and Ann Gilliland Graham emigrated from Ireland to settle in Pennsylvania about the time of the American Revolution. They had 10 children, the youngest was Hugh. Hugh Graham married Mary Wallace and they had 8 children. Their son, Robert, born in 1791, is my great-great grandfather. He served in the First Regiment of the Pennsylvania Militia during the war of 1812. In September of 1814, he was on the battlefield at Ft. McHenry during the British bombardment that Francis Scott Key memorialized in his poem “Defense of Fort McHenry,” better known today as “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Robert Graham married Roxanna Winchell in 1820. They had 11 children. Following his military service, Robert studied architecture in New York and then entered the business world. In 1847 he located in Rock Haven, Kentucky and established a mercantile business as Robert Graham & Sons. Three of his sons, Edwin Smith, Francis Hugh, and Gustavus Adolphus were adventurous and pioneered to Texas. Francis died in Waco, Texas in 1866, leaving his wife and 4 daughters fatherless. E.S. and G.A. would stop in Waco whenever they took the train between Fort Worth and Galveston to look after the women.

G.A. Graham received a limited education in Grahampton and Rock Haven where he grew up. He was a farmer until he and his brother traveled to Texas. He was married to Edmonia Woolfork in 1859 and fathered 8 children. Following the Civil War, he journeyed to Texas, bringing his family down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans and over the gulf to Galveston, then by rail to Corsicana, and finally by Stage to Weatherford and the Salt Works where he and E.S. later located the city of Graham.

G.A. was associated with his brother Edwin S. Graham in the laying-out and founding of the town of Graham and was the first permanent postmaster in 1876 when the salary was only $13.00 a year. Upon the organization of Young County, G.A. Graham was made its first surveyor. G.A. Graham died in 1906. He and Edmonia are buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Graham.

The primary subject of this paper is my great-grandfather, Edwin Smith (E.S.) Graham. He was the sixth child of Robert and Roxanna Graham, born in 1831. He also received his education in the village schools of Rock Haven and Grahampton. He was engaged in the mercantile business with his father, “Robert Graham & Sons” until his father’s death in 1862. E.S. then purchased the interests of his partners and for a few years conducted the business alone. After the Civil War, he closed the business and became interested in the Glasgow oilfields in Kentucky, leasing land, forming companies and drilling oil wells, realizing a handsome profit.

While E.S. was running his father’s business in Rock Haven, Kentucky, he met a lovely brown-eyed girl at a religious meeting that was held in his warehouse. He was determined to win her if at all possible. She was Addie Kintner from across the Ohio River in Indiana at a place called Cedar Farm. She was the oldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Kintner. Born in 1843, Addie attended school only one mile from Cedar Farm and prior to the Civil War attended Mrs. Tevis’ School for Girls in Shelbyville, Kentucky. But, once the war began, her father would not let her go away from home, hiring a governess from New York instead to teach the children. I had the pleasure of visiting Cedar Farm in 1979. It is a magnificent estate overlooking the Ohio River. I can only imagine how lovely it had been when Addie was a girl.

E.S. knew that Addie’s family was always glad to receive mail. He would walk down to the river’s edge and holler, “hello!” One of Addie’s brothers would row across the river to pick up the mail, and E.S. Addie said he was a frequent visitor for several years. They were married finally in the summer of 1865.

Using the profits earned in the Glasgow oilfields, E.S. invested many thousands of dollars in the lands of the Peter’s Colony in northwest Texas. The 95,000 acres where he afterwards founded the town of Graham cost him only 70 cents an acre. E.S. was so pleased with the mild climate and wonderful possibilities of Texas that he felt he could never be content elsewhere.

Their son, Robert, was born in 1867, very soon after E.S. sold the family business and moved his mother and sisters to Louisville. Addie returned to Cedar Farm with the new baby allowing E.S. free to leave. He headed back to Texas and his investment in the Peter’s Colony Lands. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1869. E.S. was anxious to show Addie Texas, so in the fall of 1870, he began making plans for their journey.

Addie tells about this journey in her Recollections: “He had a camp wagon made after his own plans, large in size but of light wood which he shipped on a Mississippi river steamer, on which we took passage. We had a pleasant voyage down the Ohio River then the Mississippi, until we reached the mouth of the Red River where we transferred to another boat which carried us to Shreveport. There our two weeks of steamboat travel ended, and securing two good horses and other things necessary, started for Fort Worth.” The family stayed with Col. Overton in Fort Worth while E.S. continued prospecting and investing in the Peter’s Colony lands. Addie goes on to say in her Recollections: “Wild Indians roamed through all this country then, and there was danger to the white man. So he always left home well armed and in company of experienced frontiersmen. I think he was fortunate in making his trips in safety.”

In March of 1872, back at Cedar Farm, Malcolm Kintner Graham was born. E.S. had his heart set on a quick return to Texas, so with Addie safe at home caring for her widowed mother and three small children, returned to Texas to make a home for his young family. Unfortunately, the early 1870’s brought a financial panic. E.S. had borrowed a large sum of money to secure the Texas lands, only to find that there was no demand at all for it. For several years it was all he could do to pay taxes and keep alive, but finally Addie received a letter from E.S. saying she should make ready as soon as possible for the move. Little Malcolm was 7 years old.

E.S. had prepared a home for his family on Elm Street, north of the square, and there Edwin Smith Graham, Jr. and Anna Bertha Graham were born.

The first industry in Graham was the Graham brother’s Salt Works. They had ventured $5000 in gold to purchase the plant and improved it with at least half again that much money. The salt was of good grade and abundant, but the costs of production made it economically unwise. The Graham’s closed the plant, later selling it to John Henderson Wood, a Frontier Texas Ranger, who started a brick kiln.

The Graham brothers opened a land office for the sale or lease of lots and acreage. E.S. Graham also mined for gold on the north side of Twin Mountain, but the vein he found did not warrant production. His daughter, my grandmother, Anna Bertha told this story about her father’s gold mining, “Father used to spend a lot of time panning for gold in the creek. He was always interested in mining. William Craig was courting my sister Bessie then and used to bring her boxes of candy with the aluminum wrapped in gold colored foil, so I thought it would be funny to play a joke on Father at the mine. I wadded up some wrappers and threw them in the creek for him to find. My father got really mad with me about that!”