The Texas Grahams and Their Ancestors
By Elaine Wellhoner McCreary
There was plenty of room on the Graham plantation of 6000+ acres in Horry
County, SC1, but eight of the seventeen children of William Bellamy and Jane
Conner Graham got the wanderlust and, with families and possessions in tow, set
out for parts unknown. First to go were John Conner and Meriam Helen Gore
Graham, who with their four children and three other local families, set out for
Florida in 1848, settling in Marion County.2 Daniel N. Graham, after
returning from service in the Confederate Army, went west to Louisiana, settling
in Alexandria in Rapides Parish3, where he married twice and raised a family.
Six of the siblings moved to Texas. First to go were George A. Marsden and
Sarah Cox Graham. They left South Carolina sometime after the birth of
their third child in 1852 but before the birth of their fourth child in Texas in
18544. George died in 1855 in Bell County, Texas, at age 29. Family
legend has it that he was trying to rope a white tailed deer when his horse fell
on him; George died of his injuries soon after. He lived in Bell County
(once a part of Milam) near the Milam County line, and he and wife Sarah are
buried in the McCann Cemetery just over the line in Milam County.5
Legend also says that Jane Graham, concerned about not hearing from son George,
dispatched her unmarried son, Edward Wesley “Ned” Graham, to check on his
brother. In 1856, soon after arriving in Texas and finding his
brother dead, he married George’s widow. In addition to raising George’s
four children, Ned and Sarah had three more children. He became a
respected citizen of Milam County, TX, donating the land for Friendship
Methodist Church.6 He is buried in the cemetery adjacent to the church.
Also in 1856, Sarah Ann Rebecca Graham and husband William Bethel Durant moved
to Texas, bringing their four children. They settled in Leon County, Texas and
had five more children before Sarah’s death in 1868. Their second
daughter, Virginia Caroline Durant Nettles wrote an account of her Graham
family.7 While not completely accurate as to events in South Carolina, it
is nonetheless a fascinating story of life in frontier Texas.
Hosea Adelton and wife Martha Ann Graham Graham (his first cousin) arrived in
Texas around 1859.8 They settled in Leon County, Texas, spent a brief period in
Limestone County, then returned to Leon County. Hosea and
Martha brought five children from South Carolina and had three more in Texas.
Probably the most colorful Graham descendant of all was Hosea’s oldest son,
Abraham Jordan Graham. According to family lore, he was the notorious
gunslinger “Shotgun Collins”, who also went by the names “John Collins”, “John
Graham”, and others. There are various undocumented accounts of his
exploits on both sides of the law and his associations with a number of famous
outlaws, as well as lawmen.9 He was quite a character, at least in family
stories.
Mary Melvina Graham and husband Levi Robert Moody brought their three children
to Texas in 1869, settling in Bell County.10 Five additional children were
born in Texas. Mary died in 1926, the last remaining sibling of the
seventeen children of William Bellamy and Jane Conner Graham.
Last to come to Texas were Samuel B. and Margaret F. Graham McQueen. They
arrived in Milam County, Texas in 1871 with nine children.11 One more
child, Josiah, was born in 1875, and by 1876 Margaret had died. Sam
McQueen, like many of the Grahams, was a farmer.
The earliest documented ancestors of the Texas Grahams arrived in Savannah,
Georgia, in 1733, part of a group of settlers imported by General James
Oglethorpe.12 Although they may have been Scottish, they sailed from
England. Much has been written lately about Graham connections to Scottish
royalty and the nobility, but no credible documentation has been produced
to date.
John Graham and wife Mary Johnston Graham came on the Georgia Pink and took up
land in Savannah. John was a tanner by trade and apparently something of a
rebel who chafed against Oglethorpe’s many rules.13 On December 9, 1739,
John and family “quitted” Savannah, moving to the Carolinas.14 Nothing is
known about the family until 1766 when John Graham purchased land in South
Carolina. Located on Mitchell Swamp in Horry County, the land comprised
3,300 acres granted in 1739 by King George II of Great Britain to Thomas
Waring.15 On February 23, 1768, John Graham received his own Royal Grant for an
additional 500 acres from King George III of Great Britain.16 As was
customary at the time, the grant was accompanied by the King’s Seal, a large
circular piece, embossed with an image of the king. The King’s Seal has
been handed down through the generations and is now in the possession of
descendant Sam Graham of Horry County.17
John and Mary Graham brought two sons and a daughter, John, William, and Mary,
to Georgia. Both sons died of fever in within four months of arriving in
Savannah.18 John and Mary had three more children, and as was often done in that
era, two younger sons were named for their deceased older brothers, John and
William; the other son was Gilbert. John Graham died before 1780 and
wife Mary‘s date of death is unknown. Although their graves are not
marked, they are thought to be buried in the Old Graham Cemetery, located on the
Mitchell Swamp plantation.
For many years, family legend held that son William Graham was born in Scotland.
This was perpetuated in a book by Beulah Holly Henderson, who got her
information from South Carolina Grahams in the 1930s.19 Subsequent
well-documented research by Erleen Horne and Harmon and Betty McCall Graham has
established that William was the son of John (above) and born in Prince
Frederick Parish (later Horry County), South Carolina in 1748.20
William Graham married Elizabeth Bellamy. They had five children: Peggy
Ann, Eliza Ann, William Bellamy, Abraham Jordan, and Susannah.21 William
worked the plantation and prospered. Elizabeth died in 1815 and William
followed in 1824. Although their graves are not marked, they are also
believed to be buried in the Old Graham Cemetery.
Son William Bellamy and his wife Jane Conner Graham were the parents of
seventeen children: Elizabeth Jane, John Conner, Edward Wesley (Ned), Daniel N.,
William Isaiah, Samuel Cornelius, George Marsden, Sarah Ann Rebecca, Hosea
Adelton, Eliza Caroline, Margaret F., Darcus Louisa, Kenneth Asbury, Franklin
Bellamy, Lorenzo Dow, Mary Molsey, and Catherine.22 All but one child
lived to marry and have children. Dorcas Louisa died at age seventeen and
is buried in the Old Graham Cemetery.
Jane Conner was the daughter of Captain Edward and Sarah Wingate Grissett
Conner. Legend has it that Edward Conner served with General Francis
Marion in the American Revolution. However, his name does not appear in
any of the muster rolls for Marion’s troops, and his own sworn statement of
military service does not mention Francis Marion. Although there are a
number of greatly embellished accounts in circulation, his service under Francis
Marion appears to be a myth. He did, however, serve honorably in the
American Revolution and received a pension for his service.23
Although the Graham plantation at its height comprised more than 6500 acres, it
was very much a working farm. The plantation house, in which all seventeen
children were born, was by no means a mansion. In 1936 Beulah Holly
Henderson described it:
“The home of William Bellamy Graham was made of cypress lumber, a large,
two-story house with a chimney at each end of the house and a front and back
porch. The house is very old, though in good condition, and one of his
descendants [the John Hobson Horne family] still lives there. From the
front porch we entered a large living room with a fireplace. On the left
side of the room is a stairway to the second floor. A door from the living
room on the left enters the bedroom of William Bellamy Graham and Jane Conner
Graham, where their seventeen children were born. This bedroom also has a
fireplace and a hat shelf. Leaving the living room we entered a wide hall
with a small bedroom on each side. At the end of the hall is a large
dining room, a ”breezeway”, then a kitchen. Going upstairs are two large
bedrooms with a fireplace in each room. The house was put together with
pegs, before there were any nails, and was ceiled with wide lumber ceiling.
The kitchen had a fireplace, where the cooking was done, before they had stoves.
In the yard was a large sugar maple, also a Mosley tree and a cedar tree.”24
The Grahams owned slaves, though not in the large numbers one might expect for
such large land holdings. The largest documented number of slaves was
25.25 By 1860 this number had dwindled to 15, of whom half were
children.26
William Bellamy Graham died in 1846 at the age of 54. He and another man
had taken a plantation boat and two slaves down the Waccamaw River to Georgetown
to purchase plantation supplies. (According to one living family member, the
other man was Abraham Jordan Graham, William’s brother.) Returning with a
heavy load, including a stranger traveling to Virginia, the boat was struck by a
quickly formed storm, took on water and capsized. William Graham and the
stranger, a Mr. Smith, were drowned. The Winyah Observer recorded the
event:
“CASUALTY – Mr. William Bellamy Graham, of Horry, came to town on Thursday last
in a four-oared boat to procure some family supplies, and departed again at an
early hour on the same evening. The wind was high and the boat so heavily
laded the she filled after getting in the bay and immediately capsized.
There were five persons in the boat and of the number a stranger by the name of
Smith, who was allowed this passage up the Waccamaw, on his way to Richmond,
Va.. MR. GRAHAM and MR. SMITH were drowned. The other man and two
negroes were saved. Mr. Graham was a very respectable and influential
citizen of HORRY, and has left surviving him a wife and seventeen children.
Three or four of his sons came down the river on the SABBATH last in search of
his body. Our Bay is a dangerous sheet of water in bad weather, and it
should not be attempted to be crossed in any other than large and good boats.
The annual casualties should be a warning to strangers and all.”27
Jane Graham was left with fifteen children at home and a large plantation to
manage. Family legend gives credit to young Steven Joe, an eighteen year
old slave who survived the capsized boat, who assumed a large burden of caring
for the plantation and the family. Steven Joe was eventually given to
daughter Eliza Caroline, who married John R. Floyd. Uncle Steve, as he was
known, took the last name Floyd. Born in slavery in 1828, Uncle Steve died
in 1942, just a few days short of his 114th birthday.28
The advent of the Civil War brought changes to the Graham plantation.
According to Virginia Durant Nettles, Jane Graham proclaimed “I have ten sons in
the Confederate Army and wish I had ten more!” She did, indeed have ten
sons but George had already died in Texas. The oldest, John Conner,
already in his forties, served only in the Marion County Home Guard.29
Samuel Cornelius, however, was killed at Deep Bottom, VA in 1864,30 and Franklin
Bellamy was wounded at Clay’s Farm, near Petersburg, VA.31 Service records
have been located for all the rest, except William Isaiah and Kenneth Asbury.
Jane Graham died in bed in 1862, from an apparent heart attack. She was
buried beside her husband in the Old Graham Cemetery. Apparently based on
a letter from family in South Carolina, a rumor circulated among family members
in Texas that the plantation was ransacked by Sherman’s army, and the plantation
house and slave quarters were burned. Historical evidence does not support
this claim. Sherman’s army left Savannah and marched north to Columbia.
From Columbia they went further north, then turned the northeast and into North
Carolina, coming nowhere near Horry County.32 The house actually stood,
more or less continually occupied until it burned in 1967.
ELAINE WELLHONER MCCREARY is the 4x great granddaughter of William Bellamy and
Jane Conner Graham through their son, John Conner Graham. Elaine was born
and raised in Conner, Marion County, Florida, on land originally acquired by
John Conner Graham, who came to Florida in 1848. She grew up
nurtured on family stories told in Southern style on her grandparents’ front
porch, within walking distance of the John Conner Graham Cemetery. Elaine
holds three degrees from Florida State University: a BME in Music Education
(1970), MS in Educational Administration (1979), and a MLS in Library and
Information Systems (2002). She is presently on the faculty of Florida A&M
University as a librarian/cataloger. With her aunt, Caroline Wellhoner
Farmer, she co-authored “Across the River: a History of Education in Eastern
Marion County, Florida” (2008).
References
1 Tax roll, Horry County, SC, 1845-46.
2 1850 Federal Census, Marion County, FL.
3 1870 Federal Census, Rapides Parish, LA.
4 1860 Federal Census, Bell County, TX.
5 Headstone, McCann Cemetery, Milam County, TX.
6 “Historical Markers in Milam County”. Milam County Texas USGenweb site.
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on July 23, 2008.
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txmilam/hm_f2.html.
7 Nettles, Virginia Caroline Durant. “Durant and Graham Family History”.
undated. Leon County Texas USGenweb site. Retrieved from the World
Wide
Web July 14, 2008.
http://www.txgenweb2.org/txleon/histories/graham-durant.htm.
8 1860 Federal Census, Leon County, TX.
9 Grayson, Dorris. “Grand Paw Shotgun Collins”. Leon County Texas USGenweb
site. Retrieved from the World Wide Web August 1, 2008.
http://www.txgenweb2.org/txleon/histories/collins-grandpaw.htm.
10 Nettles, Op.Cit.
11 Obituary, Samuel B. McQueen. Cameron Herald, Cameron Texas: 5 Feb 1914.
12 Temple, Sarah B. Gober, and Coleman, Kenneth. “Georgia Journeys”. University
of Georgia Press: Athens, GA. 1961. page 35.
13 Coulter, E. Merton, and Saye, Albert B. eds. “A List of Early Settlers of
Georgia”. Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc.: Baltimore, MD. 1983.
p.19.
14 Dobson, David. Directory of Scots in the Carolinas. Genealogical Publishing
Co., Inc.: Baltimore, MD. 1986. p. 85.
15 Memorial by John Graham. SC Department of Archives & History: Columbia SC.
v.9, p. 487 and v.11, p. 168.
16 Royal Grant to John Graham. SC Department of Archives & History: Columbia SC
v.16 p. 278.
17 Shelley, Ryan R. “Family Heirloom Takes on Historical Significance”. The
Loris Scene: Loris, SC. January 29, 2003. p. 1.
18 Coulter, op. cit.
19 Henderson, Beulah Holly. “The Holly – Graham Families and their Descendants
from the Seventeenth Century”. Privately published: Ocala FL.
1954.
20 Graham, Harmon D., Graham, Betty McCall, and Stalvey, V. Chyrel. “The Grahams
of Horry County”. Independent Republic Quarterly. Conway,
SC: V. 39:1-4. 2007.
pp. 15-28.
21 Will of William Graham. Recorded in Horry County SC Probate Judge Office 16
Aug 1824, Will Book A, p. 11. Transcribed by Harmon
Graham, 2006.
22 Will of William Bellamy Graham. Recorded in Horry County SC Probate Judge
Office 21 Dec. 1846, Book L-1, p. 273. Transcribed by Harmon
Graham, 2006.
23 Conner, Captain Edward. “Edward Conner’s Statement of Service in the American
Revolution.” SC Department of Archives & History,
Columbia, South
Carolina. Comptroller General AA1554 Roll 27: l67-lSB.
24 Henderson, op. cit. p. 79.
25 Tax Roll. op. cit.
26 1860 Federal Census, Horry County, SC.
27 Winyah Observer. Georgetown, SC. 25 Nov. 1846.
28 Headstone, Old Silent Grove Cemetery, Horry County, SC.
29 Graham, John Conner. Captain’s Commission, 18th Regiment, Florida Militia.
Marion County Florida. 28 Oct. 1861.
30 Headstone, St. Paul Cemetery, Lamar, SC.
31 Confederate Service Records. SC Department of Archives & History: Columbia
SC.
32 Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman's Troops in the
Savannah and Carolinas Campaign New York: New York
University Press, 1985.