Local figure
John Washington Graham (1838–1928), son of Governor William A. Graham, sat on the UNC board of trustees from 1876 until his death, and the trustees named Graham Residence Hall for him in 1928. A Confederate major whose troops took part in the 1864 Plymouth massacre, he championed white supremacy and in 1872 sponsored a bill granting Klansmen amnesty.
Source: UNC Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward: Graham Residence Hall (2021)
Orange County Indexed has not yet linked an indexed work directly to John W. Graham. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about John W. Graham’s life and work.
Storylines this person is part of, earliest first. Each has its own page.
Dated events connected with this person: sixteen of 70, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 70 dated events in the chronology →
On buying the property in 1842, William A. Graham built a one-and-a-half-story frame law office there. It survives on the Montrose grounds; his son John W. Graham added a two-room rear ell around 1893.
People: John W. Graham
Subject: Montrose
A volunteer company raised by John W. Graham to spare its men from conscription left the Hillsborough depot for Camp Mangum near Raleigh, and the next day elected John W. Graham captain, D. S. Ray first lieutenant and R. D. Graham third lieutenant.
People: John W. Graham
A Conservative meeting at the court house in Hillsborough on November 2, 1867, seated a delegation of Black Conservatives from Durham and named a nominating committee of five white and five Black members from all parts of the county. The committee put forward Maj. John W. Graham and Dr. Edwin M. Holt as the party's candidates for the state convention.
People: John W. Graham
In a quiet election held under Governor Holden's writ to fill the Senate seat from which Josiah Turner Jr. had been excluded under the Fourteenth Amendment, Orange chose the Conservative John W. Graham by about 400 votes, and the Seymour and Blair electors carried the county by about the same margin. A county Conservative convention had nominated Graham on October 17, though a second Conservative candidate refused to withdraw.
People: Josiah Turner Jr. · William W. Holden
In 1874 William A. Graham gave the vacant Montrose land to his son Maj. John W. Graham, who built a twelve-room house on the foundation of the first house. It burned in 1893.
People: John W. Graham
Subject: Montrose
When part of the university's land around Chapel Hill was put up for sale, Spencer, fearing for places like Piney Prospect and the Roaring Fountain, wrote begging Paul C. Cameron to buy it, and Bennehan Cameron and John W. Graham came to bid for him. Cameron later left Spencer a few acres of it in his will.
People: Bennehan Cameron · John W. Graham · Cornelia Phillips Spencer
James Webb Jr. & Bro. bought from Maj. John W. Graham for $4,400 the Churton Street storehouse lately occupied by C. M. Parks, planning to repair it and move their own store into it. The paper took the price as proof that Hillsborough property still held its value.
People: John W. Graham
Between two and three hundred Confederate veterans met at the court house on the Fourth of July and organized an Orange County veterans' association, electing John W. Graham president, D. H. Hamilton vice-president and John P. Lockhart secretary.
People: John W. Graham
The county commissioners granted Smith a license to retail liquor in the town. They ruled that the revenue act of the last legislature gave them the right even though the town commissioners had not recommended him. Counsel appeared for Smith and C. D. Turner for the town.
People: John W. Graham · Calvin E. Parish
Major John W. Graham's house east of Hillsborough burned to the ground on the night of October 19, with almost nothing saved and no insurance on a loss of about $15,000. It was the second Graham house lost to fire on the Montrose site, after the governor's house in 1862; the family moved into the old law office until the present house was built.
People: John W. Graham
Subject: Montrose
After his 1893 fire, John W. Graham lived in the enlarged law office until 1899, when he let the contract for a new residence on his lot east of town: the two-story frame house that is the core of the present Montrose, the third house on the site. Work began in June and was to be finished by October.
People: John W. Graham
Subject: Montrose
At the summer term of Orange Superior Court before Judge George W. Ward, a jury found J. Knapp Horner guilty of second-degree murder on August 11 for killing Deputy Sheriff D. J. Nichols, and he was sentenced to 12 years in the state penitentiary. Horner, a Confederate veteran of about 59, appealed, and the state Supreme Court affirmed the sentence in November.
People: John W. Graham
A meeting of Hillsborough Township voters in the court house unanimously asked State Senator John W. Graham to have the legislature authorize a vote on road bonds for thirty years, to be issued in $10,000 lots over up to four years for building the township's public roads. The meeting also asked that Churton and King streets be taken from the township road commission and put under the town, and named A. J. Ruffin, C. D. Jones and Shepperd Strudwick to handle the sale of the bonds.
People: John W. Graham · Allen Jones Ruffin · Clarence Dupre Jones · Shepperd Strudwick (1868-1961)
At a court house meeting on July 5, 1917, the chapter read its national authority to organize with jurisdiction over all of Orange County except Chapel Hill and elected Maj. John W. Graham chairman, with Henrietta P. Collins as secretary and Margaret Forrest as treasurer. The Red Cross Central Committee's recognition letter followed on July 17.
Part of Orange County in the First World War, 1917–1919 · 84 events
People: John W. Graham · Henrietta P. Collins
A drive led by F. A. McNeer ran May 20-27, 1918, after ministers across the county preached on Red Cross Sunday, May 19. It raised $4,294.38, and the chapter sent $3,300 to national headquarters and kept about a quarter for local work.
Part of Orange County in the First World War, 1917–1919 · 84 events
People: John W. Graham
Meeting shortly after his death, the university trustees named the dormitory finished in 1924 on the Lower Quad for John Washington Graham, class of 1857 and a trustee since 1876. They praised his service at the 1864 Battle of Plymouth, where Confederate troops massacred Black soldiers and people who had fled slavery.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 3 with a known location.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
People named in the same dated entries as John W. Graham, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.
These works give background on Kirk-Holden War connections, 1870, the wider story this person is part of. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Personal and political papers of Willie Person Mangum, the Whig senator from Orange County, together with papers of Arthur Mangum and Charity Alston Cain Mangum. Correspondents include Daniel Webster, William A. Graham, David L. Swain, John Chavis and Abraham Lincoln, and other topics include plantations at Hillsborough, the estate called Walnut Hill, state politics, agriculture and education.
Photographs gathered by Mary Claire Engstrom (1906-1997), dated from the 1930s to 1979 with most falling between the 1950s and 1976, about 2,140 items in 4.4 linear feet in UNC's North Carolina Collection. Subjects include historic buildings in Hillsborough and Orange County, the Alexander Dixon House, the Nash Hooper Graham House, Bingham School, Nash and Kollock School, the Hillsboro' Military Academy, Carrboro views, and the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
Papers of John Heritage Bryan (1798 to 1870), New Bern lawyer, legislator and Whig congressman from 1825 to 1829, dating 1716 to 1907. His letters mostly follow social life in the towns and plantations of eastern North Carolina, chiefly New Bern and Raleigh, from the 1820s to the 1860s, and touch the university at Chapel Hill and the Hillsborough Academy.
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