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Getting to Know Adeline Lawson Graham (1856-1930) 

A Biographical Inquiry in Three Parts: Part 3

Philip Ruth, Research Coordinator 

February 13, 2023 

In its October 31, 1901, issue, The Cameron County Press reported that  

“Henry W. Graham, of Emporium, will lead to the altar Miss Adeline Lawson in the near future, the ceremony to take place in St Paul’s A.M.E. church, at Bellefonte, Pa., November 21st. Mr. Graham has resided in Emporium for many years and is a quiet industrious citizen, having the respect and confidence of our citizens. The lady of his choice has for more than 17 years been with the family of the late Ex-Governor A.G. Curtin, and no doubt will make our friend’s home a happy one. Our citizens will certainly wish them well.”

 By their own reckonings, Adeline was 42 years old as her wedding day approached, while her fiancé was three months shy of turning 50. Barber Henry Graham’s path to the engagement had been long, winding, arduous, and full of drama. He recalled some of its twists and turns in an account published in The Cameron County Press on March 12, 1896, under the heading “The Wanderings of a Slave.” From those recollections, and information gleaned from Henry’s death certificate, census schedules, deeds, newspaper reports, and other records, the following odyssey emerges: 

 Henry was born in April 1852 to enslaved parents Wesley and Abbie on Graham’s Turnout Plantation in Bamberg County, South Carolina (a “turnout” is a railroad siding). His birth added to the plantation’s population of approximately forty enslaved persons owned by master Zachariah Goodwin Graham. Over the course of the following decade, more children were born to Wesley and Abbie, giving Henry multiple brothers and sisters. In December 1864, as Union troops approached from the south, 12-year-old Henry was “taken, by master’s order, with nearly all the rest of the slaves, into a swamp and remained there some three or four weeks,” he recalled. “When the Yankees came along with their bands, drum corps, and the old flag, I left father, mother, brother and sister and fell into line with the procession.” Henry hiked with Union soldiers 250 miles northeastward to Goldsboro, North Carolina. There he seized an opportunity to “wander” farther northward in relative safety when Capt. Charles H. Rowley of Co. K, 141st Regiment, New York State Volunteer Infantry, was discharged for incompetency on March 31, 1865, and decided to return to his home in Steuben County, New York. Henry traveled with the Captain Rowley to the village of South Addison, ten miles west of Corning, and moved in with Rowley’s parents, who operated a hotel in that rural outpost.  

 Teenage Henry lived with the Rowleys from April 1865 through September 1869, doing chores and odd-jobs in the area, and occasionally attending school. Shortly after turning 17, he indentured himself for a four-year term to Orange Perry, an aged farmer living with his wife Almira on a farm near Troupsburg, Steuben County, about 15 miles west of South Addison. Henry worked as the Perrys’ resident farm hand until he turned 21 in April 1873. “Then  I went to work with pick and shovel on a new railroad,” he recalled, “working for a contractor named William Bayley, of Hornellsville [20 miles north of Troupsburg], for $2.50 a day, on the Rochester, Hornellsville & Pine Creek R.R. I worked there until the road was abandoned [in 1874].” After a short stint toiling for an unidentified farmer, Henry went to the village of Woodhull, eight miles east of Troupsburg. There he resumed his schooling (at the age of 22) and did chores for farmer John McPhee. In August 1875 he paid McPhee and his wife $350 for a property in Woodhull known as the “Edwards Land Office.” Henry rented that property to a lawyer for eight months as he continued his work on local farms. In April 1876 he sold the property back to McPhee and a business partner for $300. Though he took a loss on the sale, he likely came out at least a little ahead through pocketing eight months of rental income.

That brief foray into real estate speculation marked a turning point in Henry’s life. Among other things, it inspired him to travel 25 miles southeastward to Mansfield, in Pennsylvania’s Tioga County, where he took a job in a hotel. He spent only three months in Mansfield, but it was time enough for him to clearly envision a career beyond backbreaking labor on other folks’ farms. He must have been inspired by barbers happily plying their trade in downtown Mansfield, because he decided to return to Woodhull and take up barbering. He apprenticed under a couple of country barbers in Woodhull over the course of the next two years, then “went to Hornellsville and served six months under a first-class barber,” he recalled. “I then got married and moved to Portville, New York, and started a barber shop and worked one year or more. Then I moved [36 miles southward] to Emporium [in] September 1879,” and joined that borough’s small fraternity of “tonsorial artists.” 

Scanty records suggest that Henry’s circa-1877-78 marriage in Hornellsville was to Mary Adelia Peterson, the former wife of John H. Peterson, and mother of a daughter named Mary. By June 1880, 28-year-old Mary Adelia and nine-year-old Mary were sharing a home with Henry in Emporium with the elder Mary’s widowed aunt, 35-year-old hairdresser Lavina Simmons. Henry might have given his marriage to Mary Peterson short shrift in his 1896 recollections because by that year they were no longer living together. 

 Perhaps Henry’s separation from Mary was related to another major development in his life, reported as follows in the October 26, 1893, edition of The Cameron County Press: 

 “H.W. Graham, our enterprising tonsorial artist, has succeeded after 28 years, in finding the whereabouts of his mother, sister and brother. Mr. Graham was a slave on a South Carolina plantation and during the war made his escape, in company with another lad, and came North. He never heard from his mother until a few weeks ago, although he has repeatedly written. Now he is happy to find them.”   

Within the next few years, Henry traveled to his birthplace and enjoyed “an extended visit [with] his mother and brothers and sisters, none of whom he has seen” since 1865 (it was reported in the February 24, 1898, edition of the Press). Henry “returned from the South” in February 1898 “greatly improved in health and ready to attend to business at his old stand [barber shop] on Broad street, where he will be pleased to meet his customer.” He began turning the page to the next chapter in his life later that year when he sued his estranged wife Mary for divorce. When Mary (whose whereabouts at this time are unknown) did not contest the suit, the divorce was granted early in 1899. 

The timing and circumstances of Henry’s introduction to Adeline Harris—long engaged as a cook for the Curtins some 50 miles southeast of Emporium—have not been discovered. If Henry and Adeline became romantically linked before the fall of 1898, that relationship might have inspired Henry to seek a divorce. In any case, he acknowledged the divorce in the application for a marriage license that he and Adeline completed at the Centre County Courthouse on Wednesday, November 20, 1901, with the assistance of Centre County Register and Clerk of the Court Alexander G. Archey. Among the details recorded in this highly informative document (reproduced below) were the names of Henry’s and Adeline’s parents (though Milky’s name was unclearly rendered). 

 

This marriage license application is our only record of Adeline citing “Harris” as her middle name. The basis for that declaration is unknown. Perhaps Adeline chose the milestone occasion of her marriage to link herself nominally with the George and Mary (Curtin) Harris family she had lived with and served over the previous 17 years.   

One day after securing a marriage license, Adeline and Henry were wed in a ceremony in the St. Paul AME Church, with the recently-installed Rev. T.J. Askew officiating. The well-attended event on the morning of Thursday, November 21, was described by a reporter for the Bellefonte News as follows: 

 “Mr. Henry W. Graham of Emporium and Miss Adaline [sic] Harris Lawson, of Bellefonte were united in marriage this morning at 11 o’clock at the A.M.E. church on St. Paul street. There was a large audience present, many white people being in attendance, showing the high respect in which the bride and groom are held in this community. The words which united this happy couple for life were pronounced by Rev. F.J. [sic] Askew, pastor of the church. The ushers for the occasion were Messrs. Lewis Mills, Fred Thompson, John Carter and Emanuel Green. The worthy couple entered the church to the music of Mendelssohn’s wedding march as played by Miss Nellie Valentine. After the ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Graham were driven to the home of James Carter on East High street where the wedding dinner was served. Later they left for Emporium where the groom, who is a highly respected colored gentleman, is engaged in the barbering business.”—Bellefonte News. 

A review of the Lawson-Graham nuptials published in the Democratic Watchman included an observation that the ushers, despite barring admission to anyone “who did not have cards, had quite a time finding seats for all the guests. . . . The ceremony was said so promptly at 11 o’clock that several of the gentleman diked up in their white vests, frock coats, boutennieres and light gloves missed it entirely. The bride was dressed in cadet blue cashmere trimmed with white, and she carried white chrysanthemums. Her going-away gown was of dark blue broadcloth.” 

The pianist “Miss Nell Valentine” who played Mendelssohn’s wedding march at the Lawson-Graham nuptials was Ellen Downing Valentine, 23-year-old daughter of the late Bellefonte ironmaster Jacob Downing Valentine and his wife Deborah Downing. Nell and Adeline must have been friends, but no specifics of their friendship have been uncovered. We have more insight into Adeline’s close connection with the James Carter who hosted a wedding breakfast for the newlyweds in the Carter home on Jail Hill. James was described in a 1906 obituary as an aged gardener who “for many years worked for the Curtin family.” From other records we learn that he had been born enslaved around 1845 in Virginia, and had made his way to Centre County prior to June 1870. In that month he was recorded on census schedules working as a hostler and living with the family of A.G. Curtin’s ironmaster half-brother John Curtin at the Eagle Iron Works in Boggs Township. James married much-younger Mary Letitia (“Liddie”) Dorsey around 1877, then set up housekeeping with her in Bellefonte, where the couple raised four children. In serving “many years” as a non-resident gardener for the family of A.G. and Katharine Curtin, James must have regularly interacted with Adeline at the Curtin home on W. High Street. Their paths also crossed repeatedly at the St. Paul AME Church during regular worship services and weekday activities.  

 After the wedding breakfast in the Carter home on the southwest corner of E. High and S. Ridge Streets, Adeline and Henry made their way down High Street to the Bellefonte train station—“accompanied by lots of rice, white ribbon, etc.,” according to the Watchman report—and “took their departure on the 1:05 train for Emporium where the groom has a barber shop.” The journey to Lock Haven via the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Bald Eagle Valley Railroad, then to Emporium via the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad, would have taken several hours to complete. We can only imagine Adeline’s thoughts and emotions as she and Henry traveled up the valley of the Susquehanna River’s West Branch toward a new home in a remote town in heavily forested Cameron County. 

In Emporium, the newlyweds settled “comfortably [into] their residence on Broad street, [and began] receiving the congratulations of their many friends,” a Press editor reported several days later. Maps, census schedules, and other contemporary accounts suggest that the Graham residence was a small, one-story frame house attached to the rear of Henry’s Broad Street barber shop. 

Adeline must have been a welcome addition to Emporium’s relatively small Black community. She joined a population comprising just four families—the Fountains, Pattisons, Robinsons, and Bradys—and a few unmarried men. For every one of Emporium’s three-dozen people of color, there were nearly 70 white residents. None of the borough’s six churches were home to an AME congregation, so Adeline and Henry began worshipping with the predominantly white congregation of the First Methodist Episcopal Church on the southeast corner of E. Fourth and Spruce Streets. When AME ministers from Bellefonte, Williamsport, and other points visited Emporium, they were usually given an opportunity to preach from the First Methodist Episcopal pulpit. 

Adeline and Henry occupied the small house attached to Henry’s barber shop for two-and-a-half years, as Adeline made new friends and managed her own household for the first time in her life. The Grahams’ move in the spring of 1904 to a much larger and better equipped residence on W. Fifth Street—a three-minute walk northwest of the barber shop—appears to have been funded at least in part by their sale of real estate a few months earlier. On Tuesday, November 10, 1903, Adeline and Henry walked over to the Cameron County Courthouse to have the Recorder of Deeds draft a deed by which the Grahams conveyed a plot of ground just under one acre in Pleasant Gap (three miles southeast of Bellefonte) to Sadie C. Hile, a white, 47-year-old, divorced Bellefonte seamstress. The Recorder described the conveyed tract as comprising three contiguous lots on the southwest corner of Walnut and Turnpike Streets (now College Avenue and Route 144, respectively), bequeathed by Adeline’s father Isaac to her mother Milky in 1870. Milky had since died (presumably in the State Hospital for the Insane at Danville), giving Adeline and her husband possession of the property. The Grahams netted $80 in selling the tract to Sadie Hile, the equivalent of approximately $7,000 in today’s economy. 

A notice in the April 21, 1904 issue of The Cameron County Press informed readers that “H.W. Graham and family are moving into their Fifth street residence.” As Henry and Adeline had no children (and would remain childless throughout their 29-year marriage), this reference to Henry’s “family” rather than simply “wife” is confusing. An exacting fire insurance map of central Emporium published around that time depicted Adeline and Henry’s new home as a spacious, two-story frame dwelling at 219 W. Fifth Street, on a one-third-acre lot extending southward to Greenwood Street (the property is now addressed as 29 W. Fifth Street). In the far rear of the property stood a two-story barn beside a one-story “hen house” and shed complex. Henry would be challenged to keep those outbuildings in good repair over the coming years, if the following letter to the editor of the Press, submitted on November 18, 1910, is an accurate reflection: 

Dangerous and Mischievous Practice. 

Editor, Press; Is there no way that our borough authorities can punish, or fine, the boys who carry sling-shots, Flobert rifles, etc., and deliberately break window glass in private residences, barns and chicken coops? I have several times been compelled to replace glass in my barn and hen-house, entailing an expense of at least $8. I think the teachers of our schools should search each boy and take from all sling-shots, at the same time reporting their names to Sheriff Norris and chief Mundy. If I do not mistake, the law imposes a heavy fine as well as the cost of damage. 

H.W. Graham. 

 

The property along Emporium’s W. Fifth Street that became Adeline and Henry’s new home in the spring of 1904 is highlighted in blue on a Sanborn Fire Insurance map published a few months earlier. The Graham residence was located a couple of blocks northwest of Henry’s barber shop (also highlighted in blue) and the attached house he and Adeline had occupied during the first two-and-a-half years of their marriage.

 

Much of what can be reconstructed of Adeline and Henry’s apparently happy life together in Emporium derives from postings in the Press. Here is a chronological sampling: 

August 3, 1905: “Mrs. Henry W. Graham has returned from visiting her old friends in Bellefonte. She enjoyed her visit greatly.” 

September 21, 1905: “Notes of Interest. The Colored Odd Fellows assembled in convention at Williamsport last Tuesday and Wednesday. . . . Home-grown celery to sell, fresh right out of the ground. [Submitted by] H.W. Graham.” 

May 3, 1906: “Miss Ella Belmont, of Hallowell, Maine, visited in Emporium last week, guest of Mr. and Mrs. H.W. Graham. The lady is well pleased with Emporium and hopes to return to during the summer, to remain permanently.” 

March 19, 1908: “Mr. and Mrs. H.W. Graham entertained the Welcome Guest Club, composed exclusively of colored citizens, last Tuesday evening, in honor of Mr. Jas. Gasner, a colored undertaker, of Indianapolis, Indiana.” 

December 3, 1908: “Thanksgiving Party. Mr. and Mrs. H.W. Graham, most royally entertained a few friends last Thursday evening at their home on Fifth street. The table was spread with the finest of dainties and as Mrs. Graham has a great reputation in the culinary art, the feast was heartily enjoyed by all present. The dining room had a very pretty appearance, the gas-lights being turned low and the table lighted with shaded candles. Mrs. Graham was assisted by her friend, Mrs. Jackson, of Boston, Massachusetts.” 

July 1, 1909: “Colored Folks Pic-Nic. Mrs. William Robinson and sons gave a pic-nic at Keystone Park last Friday in honor of Rev. Farley Fisher, wife and children, of Williamsport. The following were invited guests: Mrs. Z.A. Jones and child, of Rock Hill, South Carolina, Reuben Fountain and family, William Scott and family, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Battle, Mrs. H.W. Graham. Of course they had a delightful day.” 

July 15, 1909: “Mr. and Mrs. H.W. Graham, of Fifth street, entertained a number of friends Wednesday evening, July 7, in honor of Prof. C.P. Stinson, the noted banjoist, of Pittsburg, Pa., who filled a three night engagement at the Opera house. Prof. Stinson rendered a few selections for the entertainment of the guests, after which they all enjoyed a lunch.” 

July 22, 1909: “Colored Society News. Evening party. Last Friday evening, Mrs. Henry W. Graham entertained a few young folks in honor of her two nieces, the Misses Adalene and Estella Garner, of Danville, Pa., who have been visiting her during the past two weeks. Miss Adalene returned to her home last Saturday. . . . Mr. Harry Fountain had the pleasure of taking the Misses Garner, who are visiting their aunt, Mrs. H.W. Graham, of Fifth Street, and his two sisters, on a very enjoyable drive last Friday afternoon.” 

March 31, 1910: “Mr. and Mrs. Henry W Graham pleasantly entertained a number of young gentlemen at six o’clock dinner Easter-day, at their pleasant home on Fifth street, in honor of their nephew and guest, Mr. D[aniel] Garner, of Danville, Pa. Those present were Messrs. F. Sutherland, of Renovo; P. Scott, of Kane, and Harry Fountain, of this place.” 

April 6, 1911: “A quilting was held at Mrs. H.W. Graham’s residence, March 29th. Covers were laid for ten. ‘Call again ladies.’” 

In the last week of February 1910, Adeline was on the receiving end of darker news: on Sunday morning, February 20, the half-century home of the St. Paul AME congregation in Bellefonte—site of Adeline and Henry’s wedding—was destroyed by a fire believed to have “originated from the furnace in the basement” (as reported in the Democratic Watchman). When Adeline learned a few weeks later that Rev. P.E. Paul and his St. Paul congregation resolved to erect a brick replacement on the stone foundation of the burnt building, she committed to raising funds to support the effort. An announcement in the August 11, 1910, issue of the Press described one of her attempts to do so:   

Ice Cream and Cake Social. 

Mrs. Henry W Graham, wife of our respected tonsorial artist, being desirous of assisting her friends in Bellefonte, where she resided so many years, in their effort to rebuild the A.M.E. church, recently destroyed by fire, has decided to give an ice cream and cake social at their comfortable home on W. Fifth street Thursday evening, August 18th. We hope our citizens will liberally patronize the good lady and thereby aid her in her good work. 

Adeline’s fundraising efforts appear to have succeeded, as a few weeks later she sent a check for $30 (about $800 in today’s economy) to the St. Paul A.M.E. congregation “to help pay the debt on their new church” (according to a report in the Watchman). She may have contributed even more when she attended the dedication of the new brick church on Sunday, October 14, 1910. The Watchman reported that “the total collections during the day’s very fitting [dedication] services aggregated a little over two hundred dollars, leaving a balance of about eight hundred dollars yet to be liquidated.” 

The most recent issue of The Cameron County Press searchable online was published on April 13, 1911. Reports of Adeline and Henry’s activities in Emporium from that time forward remain to be gleaned from hard copy or microfilmed editions of that newspaper and others. We can safely assume that Adeline traveled southward occasionally during the 1920s to attend funerals of her few blood relatives—Garner descendants of Adeline’s half sister Mary Ann Gilmore. The family of Mary Rebecca Gilmore and her pastor husband Charles Garner Sr. had settled in Danville, seat of Pennsylvania’s Montour County, in the fall of 1902. Their circuitous path from Bellefonte to that resting place will be traced in upcoming posts. We will simply note here that most of the Garners spent the final years of their lives in Danville, and five of them died there between 1920 and 1931.  

We have have yet to confirm Adeline’s attendance at the funeral of her 70-year-old half niece Mary Garner, which must have occurred around New Year’s Day 1922, but Adeline’s presence at the funeral of Mary’s 79-year-old husband two years later was reported in a newspaper recap. “Mrs. Henry W. Graham, Emporium, Pa.” was among the crowd of mourners who filled Danville’s Walnut Street AME Church to capacity on Tuesday, August 11, 1924, to mark the passing of the Church’s “well-known and popular colored minister.” In addition to exhortations from four visiting pastors, Adeline heard the Church’s choir and “a mixed quartet from the Bible class of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Sunday school [render] special numbers, including ‘Abide With Me,’ ‘Asleep in Jesus,’ and ‘I Want to See Jesus.’” 

Adeline lived another six years, all of them in Emporium with Henry. Our last glimpse of her during her lifetime is on census schedules filled out on May 5, 1930, by an enumerator visiting the Grahams’ W. Fifth Street residence. Adeline and Henry were noted to have sold their home by that time to their boarder: 40-year-old South Carolina native John N. James, working as a cook for a private family. Henry still owned and operated his barber shop, despite approaching the age of 80. In Adeline’s final round of presenting personal data to a census enumerator, she reported her age as 72, placing her birth in late 1857 or early 1858. On the same occasion, however, she repeated the assertion on her marriage license application that she was 42 years old at the time of her wedding in October 1901, by which measure she would have been born in late 1858 or early 1859. 

Unaccountably, the death certificate filed for Adeline later in 1930 reported her age as 74, and her birth in January 1856. While her true birthdate is likely to remain a mystery, the obituary for her published on the front page of the October 16, 1930 issue of The Cameron County Press/Independent—while containing a few factual errors—leaves no question as to the esteem she earned through more than seven decades of living:  

DEATH OF HIGHLY RESPECTED LADY 

Mrs. Henry Graham Died at Her Home on Fifth Street Saturday Evening 

The death of Mrs. Adeline Lawson Graham, colored, took place at her home on West Fifth Street Saturday evening [October 11, 1930] shortly after ten o’clock. Death was due to complications and infirmities incident to old age and followed a brief illness. 

Mrs. Graham was born in Bellefonte, Pa., in 1856 and in early youth was “bound out” to a Quaker family in Chester County, Pa., as was the custom by many colored families at that period in our history. It was there that she received a fine training in domestic arts. Later she came back to Bellefonte and for a period of twenty-five years was cook in the household of Ex-Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania. Twenty-seven years ago she married Henry Graham of Emporium and had made her home here since that time. 

She was known and respected by the entire community. Her ready wit and sunny smile and her unfailing fund of humor and cheeriness made her hundreds of friends in Emporium who will sincerely miss and mourn this kindly woman. 

Funeral services were conducted from her late home Monday morning by Rev. C.F. Berkheimer [pastor of Emporium’s Methodist Episcopal Church]. Interment was made Monday afternoon in the Bellefonte Cemetery. Rev. [W.E.] Gibbons of the [St. Paul AME] Church of Bellefonte was in charge of the burial services at that place. Many prominent Emporium people attended the services at the home. 

She is survived by her husband and one niece, Mrs. Adeline Hayes of Harrisburg, and three nephews, Daniel and Joseph Garner of Harrisburg, and Charles Garner [Jr.] of Alliance, O[hio], all who attended the rites at Emporium. 

Adeline’s body was buried in Section 8 of Bellefonte’s Union Cemetery, in or beside a pair of Mills family plots. Henry saw to it that her grave was marked with a stone monument bearing the inscription “Adeline Lawson Graham / Wife of Henry W. Graham / 1856-1930.” As of this writing, visitors to the site will find that monument toppled from its base. 

Henry lived another seven years. In the wake of Adeline’s passing, he moved back to South Carolina, presumably to spend his final years with relatives. His death from old age on December 1, 1937, occurred in Summerville, Dorchester County, the same city in which his 85-year-old sister Frances, widow of Albert Kelly Sr., had died the previous February. Henry’s body was thus buried near Frances’ in Summerville’s Pineland Cemetery, rather that beside Adeline’s in Bellefonte. 

* * * 

My next series of blog posts will explore the life of pastor Charles Garner Sr., Adeline Lawson Graham’s half nephew by marriage. I thank Susan Hoy, Vice President of the Cameron County Historical Society, for her assistance with Emporium-related research. Among other things, she provided the 1896 recollections of Henry Graham, as well as Adeline’s 1930 Press/Independent obituary.