Arkansas McGraws
When I was younger I wasn’t very interested in my genealogy. For a lot of my life I was much more
interested in where I was at that moment than where I came from. Moving to Arkansas and teaching at the school
where my grandfather graduated in 1931 started to change that. When we recently had a chance to visit some
of the little towns in Franklin County, Arkansas, where some of my McGraw ancestors
settled after the Civil War, my desire to find out about that part of my family
was heightened.
This photo makes a nice focal point for some fascinating (to
me) stories.[1] The stately couple in the foreground of the photo
are Daniel Murdock McGraw and Catherine Babb McGraw, my great great
grandparents with all ten of their children on their 50th wedding
anniversary in 1922. My great
grandfather, Fred, is standing directly behind his dad.
Dan McGraw, who everybody called “Buddy,” fed up with the
limited opportunities available in post-Civil War Mississippi, heard about
homesteads available in northwest Arkansas and decided to start fresh. He was only eleven when the Civil War started
and his attempt to enlist with his buddy, Harvey McRaven when they were fifteen
was annulled by Dan’s mother the next day.
His father and two older half-brothers had fought in the 3rd
Mississippi Cavalry in Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Corps and Dan may have felt
like he never had a chance to strike out on his own.
In 1878 he traveled alone to Ozark, Arkansas via a series of
buggies and trains with sixty dollars in his pocket. He purchased a plot of land near Cass, Arkansas
on Mulberry Mountain and built a cabin with a dirt floor and a door covered
with a deerskin. Then he sent for his
wife and three small children. He farmed
his land and worked for neighbors to earn money to buy what he couldn’t grow. His wife Catherine (he called her Katie)
taught school in their home for a dollar a month per child. Dan McGraw didn’t stay on the homestead long,
though. His search for better
circumstances forced him to move to nearby Ozark and Altus. He kept his eye out for better jobs and
educational opportunities for his children.
In the ensuing years he would work as a farmer, Deputy County Sherriff,
house parent for the Central Collegiate Institute (later moved to Conway and
renamed Hendrix College), County Surveyor and coal company superintendent. He had no formal education. When he was elected county surveyor he bought
the equipment he needed and learned on the job.
For years after he left the surveying job, surveys in Franklin County were
considered to be most accurate if they had “McGraw lines.” He was shot in the throat while on the job as
a deputy and was knocked unconscious by striking coal miners, leaving him with
a large scar on his forehead for his remaining years.
Several strong women populate the McGraw family history in
Arkansas. Catherine Babb McGraw was an
educator, a civic leader and writer. She
insisted that a church be built in Altus and personally oversaw its
construction. She was a Temperance Union
activist and eventually became principal of the school in Altus. One of the daughters in the photo, Ophelia,
graduated from Radcliffe College when it was the all-girls institute paired up
with Harvard.
Florence (tiny lady on the left of the photo), the writer of
the book where I found most of these stories, married John McRaven, the son of
Dan McGraw’s childhood friend who tried to join the Confederate Army with
him. Florence McGraw McRaven was an exceptionally
forward-thinking woman in many ways (racial tolerance was not one of those ways). She was elected to the Arkansas House of
Representatives in 1926 and served until 1930.
When she decided to sponsor legislation limiting the number of hours
women could work over dangerous machinery, she ran afoul of the large cotton
mills. The bill failed, but not without
her putting up a fight. The “Scopes
Monkey Trial” occurred around that timeframe in a neighboring state. One of the Arkansas legislators, in an effort
to ingratiate himself with his fundamentalist constituency, introduced
legislation which would make it illegal to teach the theory of evolution in
schools. Florence took the floor and
argued against the legislation saying, “any theory is but an indication of a
search for truth; that truth is of God, and why should we fear to explore any
avenue in the search.” She served two
terms in the House and then set her sights on the state Senate intent on
working to abolish capital punishment in the state. Her stance on key issues when she was a
representative cost her the backing of several key people and she lost.
Florence’s brother, Fred, was my great grandfather. He worked for the coal company at Denning,
near Altus. Eventually when my
grandfather was off to college at Ouachita, Fred McGraw moved his family to Ft.
Smith where he found work as an accountant, a move necessitated by the closure
of the coal mines near Altus. When he
was younger, Fred went off to training in preparation to be shipped off to the
Spanish-American War and also lit out to present day Oklahoma west of Ft. Smith,
the wild country depicted in the movie True
Grit. Something he saw or
experienced in “the territories” convinced him being a bookkeeper back in
Arkansas was the best way to go. I’d
love to know what he saw out there. Or
maybe I wouldn’t.
[1]
Most of this info comes from a book written in 1953 by Florence McGraw McRaven
entitled Swift Current
