Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1879 — An Eventful Career. [ARTICLE]

An Eventful Career.

The . town of Graham, ift Young county, Tex As., is named after a man who, though no longer young in years, is still so in both physical and mental vigor, and whose name and posterity may well be perpetuated in the beautiful region which has been selected for the town site. Dr. Christopher Graham was born near Danville, Ken-: tucky, October 10, 1787, and was descended from Irish parents. He grew up with but limited education in that then new country. He served in the war of 1812-’ls. He descended the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans several times before the days of steamboats. He was a proficient hunter and excellent in athletic sports and manly courage. As a marksman and hunter he had but few equals in the early days of the present century in Kentucky, then famous for riflemen and hunters. After serving through the war with England he,returned to Kentucky, but not to remain long in the s prospects of peace. In the year 1817, when the expedition of General Mina was preparing to invade Mexico through Texas, in order to overthrow the Spanish po Dr. Graham left Kentucky with &he afterwards famous Texas patriot and hero, Colonel Milam, Ben Sanders, Wm. Baylor, Charles Mitchell and others, and joined the force of Mina at San Antonio, -Graham, however soon became dissatisfied with the manner In which the war was conducted, and returned, thus escaping the tragic fate of some of those who him. He returned to Kentucky, studied medicine and, it is said, was the first M. D. graduated at Transylvania University.! He came back to Texas in 1822, and was with Stephen F. Austin in the City of Mexico when the latter went to secure a confirmation of his colonization contract. Going back to Kentucky, lie commenced the praetiee of medicine, and built up-the now famous watering place, Harrodsburg Springs, which property he in 1852 to the United States for a military asylum, receiving the sum of SIOO,OOO for the same. Again he returned to Texas and accompanied Colonel Gray in his reconnoisance for a line of railroad on the thirty-second parallel. The Doctor, however, left the surveying party at El Paso and proceeded through Mexico to the Pacific at Mazatlan, and from thence to San Francisco by sea, suffering many perils aud hardships both by land and water. Thence returning to Kentucky, he inaugurated a system of improvements on a grand seafo on Rockcastle river. Although now in the ninety-second year of his ago, he is still In possession of his faculties, and occasionally contributes articles of a practical and scientific character to the Louisville press, showing no diminution of liis intellectual powers. —[Galveston News.