[ Betsy, daughter of John Graham, Sr. ]

Hav­ing thus briefly sketched the descen­dants of Ann Gra­ham Kin­caid, we will now take up the mea­ger account we have of anoth­er daugh­ter of John Gra­ham, Sr. His daugh­ter, Bet­sy, mar­ried Robert Arm­strong, prob­a­bly as far back as 1750 to 1760. The best infor­ma­tion we have of the num­ber of chil­dren and their names of this fam­i­ly is tak­en from the depo­si­tion of Mrs. Alice Cavendish of Bath coun­ty in 1818 in a chancery suit between Gra­ham and Arm­strong in Mon­roe coun­ty. We are also indebt­ed to these depo­si­tions for oth­er valu­able infor­ma­tion.

Robert Arm­strong set­tled in Bath coun­ty on Jack­son riv­er and lived there till about the year 1803 or 1804, when he moved to the state of Ohio. The place on Jack­son riv­er at or near which he lived was called Mann’s Bot­tom. At the time he moved west he had liv­ing five chil­dren; three sons and two daugh­ters, whose names [36] were Eliz­a­beth, Mar­garet, Archibald, Thomas and Robert. Mar­garet mar­ried Joel Walk­er; Eliz­a­beth mar­ried first Thomas Mann and, after his death, mar­ried James Steele of Mon­roe coun­ty. Joel Walk­er and fam­i­ly moved to Ohio pre­sum­ably at or near the same time that his father-in-law, Robert Arm­strong, moved. Thomas Arm­strong also moved to Ohio. Archibald mar­ried a Miss Scott of Green­bri­er coun­ty, who was a sis­ter to both the wives of Lan­ty and Math­ew Kin­caid. Archibald set­tled on Anthony’s Creek and his descen­dants are still to be found in Green­bri­er coun­ty. His daugh­ter mar­ried Cor­nelius Rodgers, who lived and died near Blue Sulph,.Ir Springs and of her chil­dren there are now liv­ing: John, Moses and Archibald Rodgers and their two sis­ters, Mrs. Keeney, wid­ow of the late John Keeney, and a Mrs. Pat­ter­son. Archibald Arm­strong also had a son, Robert, but of his descen­dants the writer has no infor­ma­tion.

As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, Eliz­a­beth Arm­strong [37] first mar­ried Thomas Mann and to them was born one son, William T. Mann, who lived near Fort Springs in Green­bri­er coun­ty and owned a large estate there. He lived to an old age and died some eigh­teen or twen­ty years ago. He was the father of Aleck, John, Thomas, Math­ew and James Mann, the lat­ter two are liv­ing. Math­ew lives at Fort Springs in Green­bri­er coun­ty and James at Alder­son, Mon­roe coun­ty. of the chil­dren of Eliz­a­beth, by her sec­ond hus­band, James Steele, there are two still liv­ing: Mrs. Til­da Per­ry and Eliza, her maid­en sis­ter, both of whom are near­ing their nineti­eth year. They live near Sinks Grove in Mon­roe coun­ty. The oth­er chil­dren of James Steele were Dr. John Steele, who moved to Illi­nois many years ago, and B. Frank Steele, the old­est, who was a suc­cess­ful mer­chant at Union for many years, and who also for many years was Sher­iff of Mon­roe coun­ty. He lived to a very old age.

Of the remain­ing chil­dren of John Gra­ham, Sr., tra­di­tion does not fur­nish suf­fi­cient data, or [38] the records we have exam­ined suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to ven­ture to recite even a mea­ger account of their descen­dants. By his will as well as oth­er doc­u­ments we learn that there were oth­er sons and daugh­ters as pre­vi­ous­ly named, but except as to the his­to­ry of the descen­dants of his daugh­ter, Flo­rence, who was the writer’s grand­moth­er, we must leave to oth­ers to give fur­ther search of the archives of coun­ties and states and to knit togeth­er the scraps of tra­di­tion that may be gath­ered here and there to com­plete the task we have begun.

It will be noticed by his will, which is insert­ed on anoth­er page, that one Joseph Robin­son was a sub­scrib­ing wit­ness, as was also John Kin­caid. As already stat­ed, John Kin­caid was a son-in-law of the tes­ta­tor, hav­ing mar­ried his daugh­ter, Anne, and from cir­cum­stances which we have been able to gath­er, it is believed that Robin­son was also a son-in-law and, if so, he mar­ried Rebec­ca, as the hus­bands of the oth­er four, Jane, Bet­sy, Anne and Flo­rence, are known, as pre- [39] vious­ly men­tioned. This, how­ev­er, is insert­ed as con­jec­ture rather than a fact.

The assessor’s books of Augus­ta coun­ty show that Robert Gra­ham was assessed in the year 1800 with con­sid­er­able amount of lands. This is believed to be the same Robert Gra­ham as men­tioned in the will and a son of John Gra­ham, Sr. Strange to say, there seems to have been no assess­ment records kept in Augus­ta coun­ty from its orga­ni­za­tion in 1745 to 1800. Nei­ther does there exist any record of mar­riage licens­es in that coun­ty until the year 1785 — forty years after the for­ma­tion of the coun­ty. The records of these two impor­tant items being want­i­ng, much valu­able infor­ma­tion that oth­er­wise could have been eas­i­ly obtained is entire­ly lost.

In the year 1781 the Gen­er­al Assem­bly of Vir­ginia passed an act exon­er­at­ing one James Gra­ham, Sher­iff of Augus­ta Coun­ty, from the pay­ment of sev­en­ty-five thou­sand dol­lars, of which he had.been robbed. While pos­i­tive proof is not at hand iden­ti­fy­ing the fam­i­ly con­nec­tion of this man, [40] every rea­son­able sup­po­si­tion points to the fact that he was the son of John Gra­ham, Sr. No oth­er fam­i­ly of Gra­hams are known to have resided in Augus­ta coun­ty at that time, with the excep­tion of the three sons of Michael Gra­ham, who emi­grat­ed from Lan­cast­er coun­ty, Pa., about that date, and whose names were William, Michael and Edward.

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