James Graham’s estate

James Gra­ham, Sr., the sketch of whose descen­dants we have giv­en, died Jan­u­ary 15, 1813, [105] in his sev­en­ty-third year, he leav­ing been born Jan. 3rd, 1741. Con­sid­er­ing the fact that he was one of the first set­tlers of his local­i­ty, and he was encum­bered with all the hard­ships and dis­ad­van­tages inci­dent to pio­neer life, he suc­ceed­ed in secur­ing quite a com­pe­ten­cy of this world’s goods. Much of the bot­tom lands on Green­bri­er riv­er was owned by him and his fam­i­ly for some ten miles along the riv­er, amount­ing to sev­er­al thou­sand acres, and were occu­pied by them as has been pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed. He also owned oth­er real estate in var­i­ous places, among which were town lots in the town of Union, Mon­roe coun­ty, and in Point Pleas­ant, Mason coun­ty.

While on his var­i­ous trips to the Shawnee towns to secure the release of his daugh­ter from cap­tiv­i­ty, his line of trav­el lay through the state of Ken­tucky, the fer­tile hills and val­leys of which claimed no small part of his atten­tion; and in after life he made one or two tours prospect­ing the dif­fer­ent local­i­ties ill that state, with the view of locat­ing lands and mov­ing thith­er. Indeed, it [106] was imme­di­ate­ly after his return home from one of these trips that he became ill and nev­er again recov­ered. He was accom­pa­nied on one of these tours by his son, David, who was a sur­vey­or and locat­ed or, at least, made a pre­lim­i­nary sur­vey of a large tract of land.

In a par­tial diary kept by David, now in pos­ses­sion of the writer, it is shown that David made a vis­it to Ken­tucky in the year 1815, two years after the death of his father and that the land which he seems to have been try­ing to rec­og­nize lay near Frank­fort, in what is now a very wealthy and influ­en­tial part of the state. This diary speaks of his find­ing, after con­sid­er­able research, a cor­ner marked “D.G.” (David Gra­ham). From oth­er notes in the diary we learn that he vis­it­ed Frank­fort, the cap­i­tal, and many oth­er places in Ken­tucky dur­ing this trip.

Colonel Gra­ham seems to have been a man of more than ordi­nary abil­i­ty and pos­sessed with a large amount of ener­gy, push and vim, and was a leader of men rather than a fol­low­er.

[107] As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, the tra­di­tion of the branch of the fam­i­ly to which Col. James Gra­ham belonged is incom­plete, but from all the facts gath­ered, James was born in Ire­land in coun­ty Done­gal. His father was a broth­er of John Gra­ham, Sr., who set­tled on the Calf Pas­ture riv­er. Whether or not the father of James Gra­ham, Sr., ever moved to this coun­try is not now known. Nei­ther are all of his broth­ers and sis­ters known. It is, how­ev­er, known sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly that he had two broth­ers in this coun­try, name­ly: David, who set­tled in Bath coun­ty, Va., before 1766, and Robert, who set­tled at Fort Chiswell in Wythe coun­ty, Va., before the time of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War. John Gra­ham, Sr., of the Calf Pas­ture was an uncle to these three broth­ers and whether they all came to Amer­i­ca togeth­er, or whether John Gra­ham pre­ced­ed his nephews is not known.

David, who set­tled in Bath coun­ty, mar­ried Jane Arm­strong, of Augus­ta coun­ty, and had born to him two chil­dren, John and Joseph. Joseph, [108] as already stat­ed, mar­ried Rebec­ca, daugh­ter of Colonel James Gra­ham, and his descen­dants have been ful­ly referred to.

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