Henry Harlan Gragg
Henry Harlan Gragg was born on 28 November 1820 in Howard County, in the Boonslick country of central Missouri. His father was Malcolm Gragg, a Tennessee-born farmer who took up government land in Howard County, and his mother was Rebecca Broadhurst. A history of Henry County published in 1919 says it plainly: "Henry H. Gragg was a son of Malcolm Gragg, a pioneer settler of Howard County, Missouri, who entered Government land in that county nearly a century ago."
The family moved west in the 1830s. The county histories put them in Pettis County first and then, from 1836 or 1837, on Deepwater Creek in what was then Rives County and is now Henry County. The same 1919 history says three of Malcolm's sons came to Henry County in the early 1840s and entered land of their own, and that their parents settled there too. Henry was one of the three. When Henry Hibler arrived in the county in the winter of 1855, his few neighbors were "Robert, John and Henry Gragg."
On 26 June 1845, at Bolivar in Polk County, Missouri, Henry married Polly Ann Gragg. She shared his surname before the wedding; a compiled family genealogy makes her a daughter of Thomas Gragg and Nancy Crow, which would make the couple cousins. Marriages between Gragg cousins were not unusual in this family. In the same year Henry's brother Robert married a cousin, Peggy Gragg.
Henry and Polly had seven children: William Henry in 1845 or 1846, Nancy Jane, Thomas Marion, Robert Malcolm, Sarah Rebecca, called Sally, Samuel Francis and John Alexander. In the census of 1860 the family was farming in Deep Water Township of Henry County. Henry was 39 and Polly 38, and the house held William H., 15, Nancy J., 13, Marion, 9, Robert, 8, Sarah, 6, Samuel, 2, and John, a baby.
Polly died on 14 February 1862, in the first year of the Civil War. On 22 March 1864 Henry married again, to Elizabeth Jane Sevier, the widow of a man named Sweet. Her father, Abraham Sevier, had settled on Camp Branch in 1851. Elizabeth brought two children of her own, Mary Lavina and William Sevier Sweet, and she and Henry had four more: Lillie, born 27 January 1865, George Washington, Delcina May, called Della, and Amos Elbert. Lillie taught school for nine years and married Wiley H. Alexander.
In 1870 Henry, 49, and Elizabeth were farming in White Oak Township with a household of twelve: six of his children by Polly, two of their own, and her two Sweet children. In 1880 he was still farming in Henry County at 59.
A photograph survives of Henry in old age, seated, with a full white beard and moustache, surrounded by four of his grown sons. Standing from left to right are Samuel Francis, Robert Malcolm, Henry himself in the middle, John Alexander and William H. A separate oval portrait shows him younger, with long dark hair swept back and a chin beard.
Henry Harlan Gragg died in Henry County on 12 May 1893, aged 72 years, 5 months and 14 days. He is buried in the Gragg Cemetery, southwest of Urich, near the Bates County line. His stone is headed "FATHER" and carries the verse:
"Meeting is pleasure, parting is pain, God be with us till we meet again."
Elizabeth outlived him by nineteen years and died in 1912.
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Cite: Heirology, "Henry Harlan Gragg (1820-1893)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/henry-harlan-gragg-1820-1893-abce74.