JOHN B. GRAHAM.

JOHN B. GRAHAM, of the firm of Graham & West, saddle and harness-makers, was born in Washington County, Penn., in the year 1834. His father was a blacksmith, lived and carried on his trade at Burgettstown, Penn, until 1841, when he with his family removed to Guernsey County, Ohio. There he lived on a farm. John B. helped his father on the farm; received a business education, and at the age of seventeen he went to Washington, Penn., learned the harness trade, and worked at it six years. He then returned to Ohio to his father's and attended school nearly a year. In 1867, moved to Monmouth, Ill., and as a journeyman worked at his trade two years.

Moved again to Mercer County, Ill., bought and improved a farm of eighty acres. In 1862, was married to Miss Mary L. Marshall, of Illinois, in 1866; sold his farm and moved to Labette County, Kan.; entered and improved 160 acres of land and lived on the farm fifteen years; became involved in debt, lost his farm under a mortgage, and about the same time lost his wife in 1880, and, in 1881, with the fragments of a broken fortune, Mr. Graham, in September of said year, moved to McCune, Kan., built a residence and business house, and forming a partnership with Mr. West, are now carrying on the saddle and harness trade, doing a good business.

He has four children living--William, John, Frank and George. In November, 1882, was married to Mrs. Mary E. Hudson, of Kansas, and has four step- children--Mattie, Annie, John and Harry. He was one of the first Justices of the Peace in Labette County after its organization as a county. He is strictly temperate in all of his habits, and is a member of and a regularly ordained Elder and preacher in the Church of re-organized Latter-Day Saints, but an open and avowed enemy of polygamy and the Salt Lake Mormons. He is a member of the Patrons of Husbandry and of the Good Tempiars, a lover of liberty and republican institutions, "not in name but in fact," is an advocate of temperance, good morals, and a firm believer in and an advocate of the doctrines of Jesus Christ and His apostles.

Note. This information was taken from ( William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas.)
CRAWFORD COUNTY, Part 13.