Alfred Hamilton Graham was born about 1824 in Beattie’s
Ford, Lincoln County, North Carolina, to John Davidson Graham and his first
wife, Ann Elizabeth Connor.
Ann Elizabeth died in 1836 after bearing fourteen
children. John Davidson Graham remarried
but died in 1847. The federal census of 1850
shows Alfred living with his step-mother, Jane Elizabeth Johnston Graham, and
three half-siblings.
In 1853, Graham enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania. Two years later, he received his medical
degree. From 1856 to 1857, he was an
assistant surgeon at Blockley Hospital, Philadelphia.
It is not known exactly when or why Graham came to be in
Texas. However, by 1860 he was
accompanying George Wythe Baylor’s Rangers as a field surgeon while the Rangers
patrolled the western frontier of Texas to protect settlers from the Comanches.
Graham was in Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas, when he
married Mary Louise Mason on March 20, 1861. Their first son, Charles, was born in February of the following year.
On March 15, 1862, Graham joined the Confederate Army,
enlisting in Company F, 18th Texas Cavalry (Darnell’s Regiment) as ‘acting
surgeon’. His unit was already fighting in the eastern
United States as part of the Army of Tennessee when Vicksburg fell in July,
1863.
As the war ground on, recordkeeping in the Confederate Army
became rather spotty. No discharge
papers for Graham have been found; however, owing to the fact that Graham’s
wife gave birth to a daughter, Mary, on May 31, 1864, it seems likely that
Graham was back home in Texas by September, 1863. The Grahams had two more sons in 1865 and
1868.
After the War, Graham resumed his medical practice and also
purchased land in Williamson County. An
amateur archaeologist, he excavated and identified some cretaceous-period
fossils and sent them to his alma mater in 1874. He is also said to have written and published
a number of accounts and articles about his Civil War experiences.
By 1880, Graham and his wife had
also added three more children—Maggie, Mary Louise and James—to the
family. Graham continued to practice
medicine in Bagdad and Lampasas, Texas, until about 1890.
Graham was in Phoenix when he died pneumonia on May 3,
1895. He may have gone there in 1894 for
his health. There is some disagreement
over whether he died of consumption, pneumonia, heart failure--or all three. He was buried in Porter Cemetery under the
auspices of the Odd Fellows, the Masons and the Ex-Confederate Association.
Graham’s widow Mary was still living in Houston, Texas in
1919. She died in Williamson County in
September, 1923.
A Graham family photo from 1881 is in the archives of the
Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.
- by Donna L. Carr
