Wood County, West Virginia Biography of THOMAS EDWARD GRAHAM This file was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: The submitter does not have a connection to the subject of this sketch. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, pg. 534-535 Wood THOMAS EDWARD GRAHAM. Parkersburg as a great and growing center of commerce and industry will always owe much to the enterprise and personality of the late Thomas Edward Graham. He was more than a plain, practical busi- ness man who could guide large business activities to success- ful issue. He was a man of calm and reasoning thought as well as of action, and was regarded as one of the clearest thinkers on taxation and other important questions affecting the state and nation. He has been well described as a man of hills, possessing their ruggedness, fired with their un- challenged winds of freedom, and a keen sense of his rela- tionship with the great ultimate and fundamental purposes of existence. A son of Richard and Ann (Stephens) Graham, both families pioneers in Wood County, he was born in that county February 5, 1855, and grew up in the hill district somewhat outside the main currents of business life in that day. His boyhood interests were those of the log cabin school, the hunting rifle and the rough games and labor of homestead and woods. As a boy he made a reputation as a skilled horseman, and was only nine years of age when he rode his first race and in subsequent years frequently par- ticipated as a jockey. While he grew up in contact with the rough frontier epic of society, it is said that he never used profanity, and his mind and heart were kept absolutely clean. After reaching his majority he moved to Ripley in Jackson County and began his career as a merchant, buying and selling all the products and commodities. He soon established a name for honesty and business judgment. Besides his home place he extended his trade by means of wagon trains transporting and carrying goods over a wide radius of country around Ripley. His success in a restricted field brought him to Parkers- burg in 1898. He was then nearly forty-five years of age, a man of considerable capital and with the initiative and enterprise to make him a leader in what was already a thriving city. Here, with Mr. C. D. Bumgarner, his nephew, of Wirt County, he established a wholesale shoe business. Soon finding it difficult to secure a satisfactory quality of workingmen's shoes for distribution, the firm began manu- facturing shoes of good grade and thus established and built up at Parkersburg an industry which has become known from coast to coast for the quality of its special product. During his lifetime Mr. Graham saw the manufacturing and wholesale business of the Graham-Bumgarner Company reach a volume of more than $5,000,000 a year. As an auxiliary and outgrowth of this special business and in association with his friends there has since been estab- lished and built up two other concerns. His son Guy founded the Graham-Brown Shoe Company at Dallas, Texas. Be- sides the Graham-Bumgarner Company of Parkersburg there is also the Graham Brothers Shoe Company of that city. Mr. Graham for many years was regarded as one of the ablest members of the democratic party in West Virginia. He was not a politician but a thoughtful man of affairs who believed in carrying sane and constructive ideals into the handling of political problems. For years he had made a close study of taxation, both local and national, and on different occasions he presented his well conceived argu- ments in behalf of a better and fairer distribution of tax burdens, particularly federal taxation. He believed that all international problems should be solved by peaceful ad- justment rather than by the introduction of armed force, and to the end of his life he was a stanch advocate of the League of Nations. He was a charter member of the Council of 1914 at Philadelphia looking to a Federation of Nations for world peace. He was deeply depressed by the international situation following the World war, and that is believed to have contributed in some measure to his early death. He died at his home in Parkersburg, November 10, 1920. He was a delegate to the Baltimore convention which nominated Woodrow Wilson for President, and was national committeeman from West Virginia at the San Francisco convention in 1920. He was on the committee that notified Franklin Roosevelt of his nomination to the vice presidency. The late Mr. Graham was a stanch advocate of education. While his advantages were confined to a log school, his sons were given the best of educational opportunity, finishing in the State University. He was a devoted member of the First Baptist Church of Parkersburg, and was a member of the Elks order and the Rotary Club. While serving as president of the Chamber of Commerce he was leader in the movement that brought about the erection of the bridge over the Ohio River at Parkersburg. At Ripley in 1880 Mr. Graham married Miss Catherine A. Armstrong. From that day until his death his home was his shrine and the paramount interest of his life. Mr. and Mrs. Graham had three children: Guy Edgar, Thomas Edward, Jr., and Miss Gladys. The heaviest sorrow of his life came in the death of his older son, Guy, in February, 1920. Guy E. Graham was born at Eipley, March 23, 1881. He attended the public schools there, spent a year in Ohio University at Athens and three years in the State University of West Virginia at Morgantown. He planned to become a lawyer, but through the influence of his father, who needed his aid, he worked and studied and took an active interest in the shoe business at Parkersburg. He was road salesman for some years, with headquarters at Weston for four years. He then became buyer and assistant general manager in the home offices at Parkersburg. In 1911 he founded the Graham-Brown Shoe Company at Dallas, Texas, and he remained in that city, directing the affairs of the company, until 1918. He then returned to Parkersburg to take the active management of the factory, and he also became president and general man- ager of the Graham Brothers Shoe Company. He was for two terms president of the Southern Shoe Wholesalers Asso- ciation, was vice president of the Parkersburg Board of Commerce, a member of the Rotary Club and Elks. He was in a practical sense the virtual head of the two Parkersburg houses when he died February 17, 1920. The surviving son, Thomas E. Graham, Jr., was born October 23, 1892. He attended the Augusta Military Acad- emy at Augusta, Virginia, and also spent three years in West Virginia University at Morgantown. Since his uni- versity career his time has been fully taken up with the Graham interests at Parkersburg, and he is now president of the Graham-Bumgarner Company and the Graham Brothers Shoe Company. In 1915 he married Miss Goldie McVey, daughter of A. D. McVey. Their two children are named Thomas Edward III and Catherine McVey Graham. Mr. Graham is a democrat, a member of the Baptist Church, and is a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner and Elk. He is also identified with the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce.