Newberry County ScArchives Obituaries.....Graham, William Fair, Captain
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Traci Parsons-Holder howdycuzin@aol.com November 19, 1999

Source:  History of the South Carolina Military Academy
         by John Peyre Thomas
         published 1893
         
Copy donated by Jane Yates, Director Archives & Museum for The Citadel

Transcribed by Traci Parsons-Holder


Captain William Fair GRAHAM, the first Superintendent of the Citadel Academy, to who 
death came in the form of consumption, was born June 15, 1818, in the town of 
Newberry, SC. He was the eldest son of Major James Fair GRAHAM and Mary, his 
wife. Captain Graham's ancestors were Scotch-Irish on both sides, whence he no doubt 
derived his high sense of duty. He received his early training in Newberry. Subsequently 
he completed his education at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 

Appointed Superintendent of the Citadel Academy upon the organization of its first 
Academic Board, February 24, 1843, he died on April 26, 1844, while in the discharge of 
his trust after a brief but faithful service of fourteen months. 

Captain GRAHAM is represented as having been a strict disciplinarian but urbane and 
polite, and "as amiable as a sweetly tempered woman." These are the qualities attributed 
to him by Messres. John L. BRANCH and John H. SWIFT, the surviving members of the 
first Graduating Class - that of 1846 - who served under him as cadets. 

Col. BRANCH under date of October 8, 1892, writes as follows in relation to Captain 
GRAHAM: _ "I was the last person who saw him alive. Early in the night, as officer of the 
Guard, I knocked at his room door with a view of giving him the countersign. A deep, 
hoarse, and almost inaudible voice responded - 'come in.' Upon opening the door, I 
approached his bedside, remarking, 'here is the countersign, Sir?' He laid his arm over 
towards me, and I placed the little triangularly folded and sealed paper in his right hand 
and left the room. It was found the next morning unopened. At what hour during that night 
he died, no one ever knew. 

I found his hired man servant seated in a corner on the floor, and I suppose he remained 
there all night. The next morning he reported to Lieutenant CAPERS: - 'I believe the 
Captain is dead.'

Captain GRAHAM would not allow himself to give trouble or inconvenience to any one, 
and when the officers of the Institution offered on occasions to sit up with him, he 
courteously declined their kindness. 

Hence his being along the last night of his life. The corps of cadet fired volleys by 
the vault in St. Pauls Churchyard in which his body was placed."

Subsequently his mortal remains were laid away in the Newberry Cemetery among his 
kindred dead, having been escorted from the Citadel to the railway depot by the Corps of 
Cadets and the Washington Light Infantry. 

All the testimony goes to show that Captain GRAHAM, who thus died in the service of 
the Citadel and led the way to the grave, was an accomplished officer and a true man, 
tender and dutiful. 

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