Texas Grahams

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 left around 1859 and went west to Louisiana, settling in Alexandria in Rapides Parish³, where he married twice. He died in 1879, leaving a widow and ten children.

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. Ned 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 living 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 rules¹³. On December 9, 1739, John and family “quitted” Savannah, moving to the Carolinas¹⁴. 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.¹⁶ 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, and 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 1864³⁰,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.
      https://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.
      https://www.txgenwebcounties.org/leon/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.
      https://www.txgenwebcounties.org/leon/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.