Person:Christopher Graham (6)

Notes

Christopher Graham, who founded the "Graham Springs" in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, appears to have been mentioned in the Revolutionary War Pension Statement of his [apparent] Uncle, Christopher Graham (1750-1843), as follows:

According to J. T. McAllister’s Virginia Militia in the Revolutionary War Christopher Graham took the oath as Ensign on 11 May 1777. Commissions had to be signed by the governor. Each commissioned officer held his commission until he resigned or was removed. The French troops were mainly infantry under Rochambeau. Compte de Grasse was the French officer whose fleet blocked Cornwallis’s escape by York River. On 9 Nov 1842 Robert M. Graham certified Christopher Graham’s integrity and reputation as an officer, having known him for more than 40 years. On the same day William Weathers stated that Christopher Graham was “a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and a man of high standing and of a high family, his Brother was long a Congressman from the State of Kentucky, and one of the family is the proprietor of the celebrated springs of Harrodsburgh Ky.”

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Recorded, in Browning, Charles H. (ed.). The American Historical Register and Monthly Gazette of the Patriotic-Hereditary Societies of the United States of America. (Philadelphia: The Historical Register Publishing Company)
   1385.
2.   Death Notice, in Semi-weekly Interior Journal (Stanford, Kentucky)
   6 Feb 1885.

   Died At 100 - Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, so well known in this county, where for so many years he had his summer residence, has at the remarkable age of 100 years and 4 months been called to his fathers. His 100th birthday was celebrated by a grand banquet at the Louisville Hotel last October, which he seemed to greatly enjoy. In his latter years he made almost a hobby of his favorite pastime, "specimen" hunting, and there is scarcely a house in this county that he has not visited in search of curious geological formations, Indian relics of every variety, &c, which he deposited in his Louisville museum. He was born in an old fort near Danville and was an associate of Daniel Boone. Dr. Graham was the father of Mrs. Senator Jos. Blackburn and Mrs. ex-Governor Bramlette. He was an intimate friend of Mr. and Mrs. President Lincoln. Two hours before he died he directed a letter to Secretary of War Robt. Lincoln, but the contents are unknown. Dr. Graham was hale and hearty until a short time ago when he made a tour of the State, exhausting himself in so doing. His remains were brought to Danville for interment beside those of his wife and now after 100 years he sleeps near a spot upon which he was born.

3. ↑ ^3.0 3.1 Find A Grave.

   Dr Christopher Columbus Graham
   Birth: Oct. 10, 1784
   Kentucky, USA
   Death: Feb. 3, 1885
   Danville
   Boyle County
   Kentucky, USA
   
   http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=57523914

4.   Kentucky Historical Society (Frankfort, Kentucky). The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. (Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society).

   OLD GRAHAM SPRINGS: At Harrodsburg, Kentucky, Once the Most Fashionable Summer Resort in the State—Now Only a Memory of the Past, by MARTHA STEPHENSON
   Register of Kentucky State Historical Society; Vol. 12, No. 34 (JANUARY, 1914), pp. 25, 27-35
   
   ... It seems from the evidence that Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham came to Harrodsburg in 1819, and acquired by his marriage with Miss Theresa Sutton, daughter of David Sutton, a small tract of land on which was located this second medicinal spring; which he at once proceeded to utilize; for in 1820, he opened the "Harrodsburg Springs". It was the beginning of the crowning achievement of his own life, and an epoch in the history of Harrodsburg.
   
   Allen, in his History of Kentucky, says, "The life of Dr. Christopher Graham is so identified with Kentucky that I would feel that I had not completed my work without a history of his most eventful career." How much more is this true in writing of Graham Springs! A sketch of the founder is as essential to any history of Graham Springs as Hamlet is to the play. It was a stamp of his strong personality on all their history that changed their name to Graham Springs. He was born in Mercer County, Kentucky, October 10, 1787, and lived a century and three years and died in Louisville. The house in which he was born is incorporated in one which is a family residence, now in Boyle County, almost on the Mercer line. It is the historic house in which Father David Rice lived, and in which Transylvania University had its birth. Dr. Graham lived an extraordinary full live not alone by reason of his more than a century of years, but because his soul looked out of so many windows on life. The forces of body, brain, and heart were highly developed. [remainder omitted]