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NOTES: About 1838 he planned to move
from
Tennessee
to the Black
Hawk
County of
Iowa. In order to raise money for
the journey he started a shipment of produce and whiskey down the
Clinch River to
Alabama,
but the boat sank.
Thereupon he returned to his father’s farm where he stay two
years and then proceeded overland to
Buchanan County,
Missouri. The route of his traveled in
this journey of over 800 miles is not known. The wagons were drawn by
oxen and the trip required several weeks. They reached
Deklalb,
Missouri in the
fall of 1840. William
H. Sharp wrote that Anthony’s father John gave his two Negro slaves,
a man and woman, and Anthony sold them for $1100 in silver. He brought the silver with
him to
Missouri
and with this money bought and improved the farm near
Guilford
on which he lived until his death.
Anthony’s father-in-law Jacob Lower and at
least several of his eight children had migrated form the vicinity
of Knoxville, Tennessee , in 1837 or early
1838. They moved from
Jackson
County to
Buchanan
County near
Dekalb. No doubt the Lower family
influenced Anthony to follow them to
Buchanan
County. The
original boundary of the State of Missouri was a line extending
north and south through the mouth of the Kaw River, but in 1836, 15 years after
Missouri’s admission to the Union, the strip of territory between
this western boundary and the Missouri River was ceded by the
Government to the State of Missouri and in the spring of 1837 the
new territory was opened to settlement. Anthony and Martha brought
with them to
Missouri
nine of their ten children (five children were born after they came
to
Missouri). They were followed later by
Anthony’s brother, Soloman and his
family. Anthony’s
second cousin Boston Graves came from Clairborne County, Tennessee to Buchanan County
in 1843, settling near Grower, southeast of
St.
Joseph. Whether Anthony and
Boston
knew each other is uncertain.
They probably lived within twenty miles of each other in
Tennessee
and about the same distance later in
Missouri,
but in those days twenty miles was a long journey. I do not recall that my
grandfather John, Anthony’s fifth child, or his son Henry who lived
at Dekalb, ever mentioned a
Graves family at Gower and I
doubt if they were personally acquainted.
The village at St.
Joseph was platted in 1843 and three
years later the town was made a county seat. Attention in invited to
the letter of William H. Sharp, grandson of Anthony, included the
sketch of Rebecca Graves which conveys some idea of the primitive
life in Dekalb neighborhood in the
1840’s.
Anthony was a farmer and distiller of
whiskey. He had a
distillery on Still house branch in
Tennessee
and after coming to
Missouri,
worked in distilleries near Dekalb and
Rushville. He was
extremely temperate in his use of liquor and when offered a drink,
would often reply, “no I’ve had a drink today.” He lived on a rented farm
near Dekalb until 1850 when he moved to
Nodaway County, Missouri, purchasing a small farm adjoining the town
of Guilford, where he lived until his death January 11, 1882. The
Graves
Cemetery at
Guilford,
which he donated to the town, was part of his land, though he never
owned much property.
Source: John Graves and his
Descendants, by Roy Stockwell, 1954, page
66.
The above listed children are by his first
wife.
I have additional information on his ancestors
and descendants. For
additional data contact:
dallas1056@comcast.net |