Elwood Graham.—A little more than eighty years ago, a man by the name of Thomas Graham embarked on board an emigrant ship, in the north of England, for the new world. He was descended from the famous historical clan of Grahams, which figures so conspicuously in Scottish history and a part of which later dwelt in the north of England. The natal place of Thomas Graham was Carlisle, the date of his nativity being in the year 1798. He was a young man of some twenty-two years when he sailed from England, and after a four months’ voyage landed in Nova Scotia, with the expectation of meeting a brother there, but later abandoned all hope on account of the brother’s removal elsewhere. After a year or two he married Miss Hannah Wilson, who was born in New Jersey and taken to Canada in infancy. Thomas Graham was a cooper by trade and in Ontario he cleared up a timbered farm and later moved near Port Stanley, Elgin county, where both died, he at the age of eighty-four and she ten years younger. They left a family of nine children, six of whom now live, and three brothers, John, Thomas and Elwood, settled in Kent county, Mich. Thomas was a carpenter at Grand Rapids and died in 1896. John still resides in Walker township, near the suburbs of the city.

Elwood Graham, the subject of this biography, was born on December 1, 1822, in Ontario, Canada, where the village of Welland now stands, the site of the town being the location of his father’s farm. In Canada he worked for sometime as a carpenter and soon began to contract for himself, employing twenty-five or thirty men. Later he built a large sash, door and blind factory, and a sawmill, and continued in this business for eight years, engaged in the erection of all kinds of timber and stone buildings until 1856, when his factory was destroyed by fire, with a loss of $15,000.

By this calamity Mr. Graham was left with about $300 to begin anew with. The great west opening with boon in Minnesota, and he decided to go into that state. The journey was made by rail to Chicago, thence by rail to Dunlieth, and by river steamer to St. Peter Minn., where building had just started. Here he engaged in his old business of contracting with great success. He had made a claim of land a few miles from St. Peter in Nicollet county, and this he began to convert into a farm. In Minnesota, during those years, the red man was retiring sullenly before the fatal advance of the white man’s frontier. Shooting, scalping and plundering forays still occurred, and in the self-complaisant reminiscences of the old settlers of that day, the merciless and mysterious savage is apt to lend to narrative the lively coloring of mortal danger. Large portions of the state then consisted of wilderness, with magnificent forests, alive with game, and with luxuriant meadows along the river banks, inviting the settler’s cabin and the

plow. The fearless emigrants, who ventured to rear their dwellings there at that time, found it necessary ever to be prepared for an attack, as very little reliance could be placed even in the friendly protestations of the vagabond savages, ever prowling about, and almost as devoid of intelligence as conscience.

In 1863 Mr. Graham took up another claim of land opposite New Ulm, and had but begun improvement when the Sioux outbreak occurred just at the time when all the soldiers had been taken south to participate in the campaigns of the Civil War. The Indian agency was at Fort Ridgely, some three miles distant from where Mr. Graham had his claim. The Indian agent had, instead of paying the Indians in gold as the law required kept them waiting for weeks, and finally paid in greenbacks. The trader had sold the Indians supplies at exorbitant prices, and they refused the "rag money." Accordingly the agent returned to St. Paul to get the gold. He was gone three weeks, and the Indians became so angered that they began a massacre of the traders. The outbreak came suddenly on the 16^th of August, 1863, and as soon as it was realized that squads of Indians were marauding and burning houses and stacks of grain, Mr. Graham loaded his four children, and, in company with his brother, drove out into the prairie far away from the dwellings, and, as he camped on the plain that night, saw the sky reddened with the flames of the burning houses. Some neighbors returned to their homes to procure their abandoned valuables, but were slain by the merciless savages. The second day saw them continuing their journey, now joined by hundreds, and one day subsequent they met a squad of soldiers, who had been taken from Fort Ridgely the day before the outbreak, but had been recalled to quell the uprising. All the arms of the settlers were gathered together, and the company of about forty soldiers followed the river down until they came opposite Fort Ridgely. Here they were fired upon by the Indians and killed and wounded to the last man,

Mr. Graham reached Le Sueur, and there, in company with two or three hundred others. Fortified themselves, and about later the outbreak was quelled by Gen. Sibley. In the meantime Mr. Graham had returned to St. Peter; his team had been employed to carry war material to Fort Ridgely, and as he had lost all his buildings and stock, he did not therefore return.

The uprising resulted in the massacre of about 1,700 victims, and in most cases the mutilation of their bodies. Three hundred women and children were captured, and after weeks of effort by Gen. Sibley about 120 were rescued, the others having died either from abuse or exposure. Mr. Graham was a witness to the pitiable condition of the captives after they were secured six weeks later, and was out for a month to attend to the burial of the 1,700 massacred. He was also a spectator of the hanging of thirty-nine Indians at Mankato, Minn., and after all signs of hostility and trouble had passed he re-located near St. Peter, on another farm at Kasota, and there remained two years longer, until the fall of 1864, when he came to Michigan. His father-in-law, Jesse Kipp, had recently settled in Walker township, Kent county, and so he decided to remain at Grand Rapids after selling what he then owned in Minnesota. He bought a farm in the above named township and there lived for twenty-four years, finally disposing of the property and coming to the city. He now devotes a great deal of time to travel. He and family spent one winter in England, making a tour of the old country whence the family came, and has enjoyed a stay in California for four winters. Besides farming, Mr. Graham had some interest in other lines of business. He owns several houses and lots in the city, and has also built a beautiful residence on Sunset avenue, where he now passes his declining days in peace.

Mr. Graham was united in marriage on January 1, 1850, near St. Thomas, Ontario, to Miss Anna M. Kipp, daughter of Jesse and Eliza (Morgan) Kipp, she of Nova Scotia and he of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and who in the year 1864 made their home in Walker township, Kent county, Mich., and there died, he at seventy-eight and she at eighty years. A son, Charles E. Kipp, resides on and operates the old homestead.

The Graham family consists of four children, viz: Isabella, the wife of George Hogdone, of Walker township; Robert D.; Eliza, and Thomas E. Eliza married C.C. Michaelides, a Greek gentleman of a Greek firm, wholesalers in cotton and wool, at Liverpool, Eng., the largest firm in that business in the world. She had visited a wealthy widow at Manchester, England, who took her about the continent, thus becoming acquainted with her husband, and returning to her parents, was married soon after. Thomas E. Graham, the youngest in the family, lives on the old homestead in Walker township, which he purchased of his father.