Captain Isaac Graham
by Michael F. Kinsella
Captain Isaac Graham
by Michael F. Kinsella
Captain Isaac Graham - Time line biography of his life that was written by Mr. Kinsella. The pages use to be available on the internet at another location and are no longer there. I have created these pages because Isaac was a true California hero worth knowing. These pages may not be all that Mr. Kinsella wrote. I once played Isaac at the Everygreen Cemetery in Santa Cruz on May 1st, 1999. - Floyd D. P. Øydegaard
September 1, 1800
Isaac Graham was born in Fincastle County, Virginia.
1803
The Graham family moves to Crab Orchard, Kentucky.
1806
Isaac's father, Jesse Graham dies.
War of 1812
All of Isaac's brothers participate and stay with the army until the battle of New Orleans in 1815.
1815? -1818
Isaac races horses as a jockey. He is rumored to have done some Indian fighting.
1818
Isaac Graham joins with a group of other young men to hunt the wilds of the route between the Missouri River and Fort Hudson where they became stranded for the winter.
Late 1818 - 1820
Travels to Marthysville, Missouri, where he spends time with the famous trapper, explorer, and politician Daniel Boone. Daniel Boone died on Sept. 26, 1820, with Isaac Graham and others at his bedside. His wife buried him on a hilltop overlooking the Missouri River. Years later his body was taken back to Kentucky.
1820 - 1826
Graham travels for a time working for, William Ware goes home toward Crab Orchard, Kentucky. Yet while in Jonesville, Tennessee, he married a Miss Jones, and proceeded to father four children, two sons, Isaac Wayne and Jesse Graham and two daughters.
1826? - 1829
Isaac Graham becomes a full-time trapper. … Spending three-years with a very young Kit Carson, until 1929 when, Ewing Young, hired Carson for his famous expedition to California.
1829
Isaac and his first wife split-up … Either Isaac lied that they had split-up… or it is true that he had thought she had been killed by Indians. The truth is that Mrs. Graham and the children migrated to Texas.
May 9, 1830
Isaac Graham is a member of a party of forty-eight men who leave Fort Smith under the leadership of a Colonel Robert Bean and his son William. Two men, Dye and George Nidever put to paper many of those who were on the journey with them. Many of these strong and capable men would continue to play a part in Graham and California's life, especially the name of the man who would play a huge role in Graham's life, Henry Naile. Others were, Alexander, Pruett Sinclair, Frederick Christ, Joseph L. Majors, William Ware, Colonel Robert Bean, William Bean, John Sanders, John Porter, Jonos Bidler, Isaac Williams, Dr. James Craig, Mark Nidever, John Fay, James Wilkenson, John Chard, Jonos English, Chamber Spaulding, John Price, Alexander St. Clair, Pruitt St. Clair, Thomas Dorgan, James Anderson, Joseph Gibson, Frederick Christ, Powell Weaver, Cambridge Green, Pleasent Austin, James Boley, George Gould, Thomas Hammond, John Pullium, Cyrus Christian and Ambrose Tomlinson.
They would travel from Fort Smith and then follow the north fork of the Canadian River to the Arkansas River. And from there, travel over the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico. Each man had two, or three pack mules. Graham had three.
