The Graham Family
Paternal grandparents – Michael and Susannah (Miller) Graham
It was 1776 when Michael Graham decided to uproot himself for the second time. Fifty years earlier, the extreme poverty of Ulster had brought the family to a new life in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where Michael grew up, married, bought a farm, and eked out a living for his twelve children. His second wife, Susannah Miller, had died four years ago, and only the youngest children remained at home. Michael Jr., with all the enthusiasm of an 18-year old, had run away to help the Continental Army evict the British from New York. Michael sold his farm, packed up his two youngest boys and his youngest daughter Margaret, who had been widowed soon after marriage, and joined the migration of hopeful Scots-Irish down the Great Road to the Shenandoah Valley. His destination was Randolph County, North Carolina, where an older daughter, Mary Graham Sharp, was living, and he would settle there with Margaret for a few years.
But along the way, he stopped at Timber Ridge in Virginia, where his son William was an ordained minister. The people seemed to like his preaching, and had asked him to teach their boys as well, going so far as to build a school building close to the Timber Ridge Church. This would be a good school for his youngest sons, John, 16, and Edward, just 12 years old, at least for a while. After the war ended, high inflation made families less willing to spend on tuition, and the school at Timber Ridge closed. William moved his growing family and his younger brothers, now including Michael Jr. as well, to Mulberry Hill, near the nearby town of Lexington, and he continued to tutor a few boys in his home.
http://wagraham.academic.wlu.edu/the-graham-family-of-lexington/
