Rev. John D. D. Graham
The ashes of this eminent servant of God repose in the village cemetery south of West Union on a hilltop which overlooks a wide expanse of plain in Liberty Township to the southwest, the rough hills of Jefferson Township to the east and the Kentucky hills to the southeast. To the north lies the village overshadowed by the Willson home to the north east. No lovelier spot in the world for the respose of God's chosen ones and their ashes are all about him.
The generation now living in West Union do not know the story of the life represented on the modest stone, which reads as follows:
Rev. John Graham. D. D.,
died
July 15th, 1849,
In the 60th year of his age.
But to those who read this history and remember it, that stone shall hereafter speak and tell the noble life it represents.
John Graham was born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, in 1798. His parents were Scotch-Irish. He was educated at the Philadelphia Academy under Doctors Wylie and Gray. He studied theology in the U. P. Theological Seminary in New York Citv, and one of his instructors in the seminary was the Rev. John K. Mason. D. D. His training in the languages was most complete. He read Latin, Greek and Hebrew as readily as English. He was licensed to preach in the United Presbyterian Church in 1819 and ordained August 30, 1820. From August 20, 1820, until October 8, 1829, he was pastor of the Washington and Cross Roads Churches in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and at the same time he was Professor of Languages in Washington College.
In 1821, he made a trip to Ohio and, among other places, preached at Greenfield, Ohio. Here he met Miss Sarah Bonner and fell in love with her. The next year he returned and married her. She survived him until January 15, 1866, when in her sixty-sixth year, she was called away.
Rev. Graham was called to the churches of Sycamore and Hopkinsville, in Warren County, in 1830, and remained there until 1834. While there, Jeremiah Morrow, a former Governor of Ohio, was one of his elders. Mrs. Ellen J. Gowdy, his eldest daughter, who furnished many of the facts for this sketch, speaks of the many pleasant hours she and her brothers and sisters spent in the comfortable and cheerful home of the Governor. Mrs. Gowdy's parents, when the children were at the Governor's, would sometimes seek to curb their festivities, but he always insisted on their being permitted to enjoy themselves.
From 1834 to 1837, the Rev. Graham was in charge of the Greenfield and Fall Creek Churches and lived in Greenfield, Ohio. From 1837 to 1841, foe resided in Chillicothe, Ohio, and was in charge of a boys' academy there.
In 1840, he accepted a call to the churches of West Union and West Fork, in Adams County. Here he made his home in the dwelling now occupied by Salathiel Sparks. It was an attractive place on the hill north of the village and adjoining his church. His family circle here was unbroken until 1845 when his son John, aged nine, died. They called their home "Pleasant Hill," and it was an ideal home, as all their former neigh bors and friends remember.
The home of the Rev. Graham, with his two sons grown to manhood, and three daughters, attractive young women, and all fond of society, was one of the places where the young people of West Union of that day met most frequently and enjoyed each other's society. Henry Graham, a son, was at that time studying for the ministry, and his brother, David Graham, was a law student. His eldest daughter, Ellen J., afterwards married Rev. Gowdy of the same church, and now has a son a minister. But the home of the Rev. Graham had other visitors than the young people of the village. It was a station on the Underground Railroad and Black Joe Logan was one of the conductors. Rev. Graham kept horses and carriages' and they were ever at the disposal of Joe Logan to carry fugitives further north. The writer remembers on one occasion when the horses of the Rev. Graham were taken out of his stable and turned loose and his carriage thrown over the cliff near his home by negro hunters, because they knew to what uses the horses and carriages had often been put.
Mrs. Gowdy speaks of her father's family occupying a part of the house of the Rev. Dyer Burgess (now the Palace Hotel) soon after they came to West Union. Rev. Dyer Burgess and Rev. John Graham were kindred spirits on the question of slavery. Mrs. Gowdy says that while in Mr. Burgess' house the younger children were in fear and trembling, for the house had been treated to unsavory eggs and heavy missiles by the friends of human slavery. The children all stood in awe of the Rev. Burgess.
One would think, naturally, that a minister's home would be a solemn place, but his daughter Ellen says of her father's home, "It was a jolly place, if it was a minister's house." The young men and women of West Union all thought so, for they spent a great deal of time there. One young lawyer in the town was there so often that one night some of the mischievous boys took down his sign and put it up on the Rev. Graham's premises. The daughters, however, were agreeable and attractive and the young men were perfectly justifiable in their partiality for the minister's home. Mr. Graham was fond of vocal and instrumental music and often played the violin. His family were all taught to cultivate music and together could and did carry all the parts.
If there is any point in the character of Mr. Graham on which more emphasis could be laid than another, it was conscience. He preferred to obey the law of God, shield and rescue the fugitive slave, even if thereby he violated the law of man and was compelled to suffer for it. He never failed to keep an appointment.
On July 1, 1849, ne was m good health and in the full enjoyment of all his physical powers. Apparently, he had many years of usefulness before him. But the Dread Destroyer, the Asiatic cholera, was abroad in the land. On the fourth day of July, he had officiated at the funeral of Robert Wilson, who died of the cholera, and when he came home, he remarked that he had a singular dread of the disease. On the morning of July 13, both he and his son David were attacked with the disease. At that time, there was no particular fear of it and the neighbors came in numbers and tendered their ministrations. David, the son, though very near death's door, recovered, but the disease was too powerful for his father and on the fifteenth of July he passed away. He left two sons and three daughters.
The Rev. Henry Graham, his eldest son, is a minister at Indiana, Pennsylvania, and the father of eight children.
David Graham, a lawyer at Logansport, Indiana, died in 1887. He left three daughters who reside in Cincinnat1, Ohio.
Mrs. Ellen J. Gowdy, widow of Rev. G. W. Gowdy, resides at Des Moines, Iowa. She has one son living, a minister, and three daughters, one a teacher at Des Moines, one with her and one Mrs. D. B. Baker, whose husband is in the shoe business in New York City. This daughter is an artist as well as the one residing with her mother.
Mrs. Elizabeth F. Stewart, widow of R. E. Stewart, resides at Albany, New York. She has four sons, all in the ministry, and two deceased.
Mrs. Sallie M. Gordon, the youngest daughter of Rev. Graham, is also a widow. She has one daughter and two sons, both ministers. All three of Rev. Graham's daughters' husbands were ministers, and of their sons, seven are ministers.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900