Ancestors

Malcolm Gragg

Malcolm Gragg was born in Tennessee in the 1780s. The census of 1850 gives his age as 65, which places his birth about 1785; his family gives 1788 and Greene County, in the far east of the state. He married Rebecca Broadhurst, also from Tennessee, and the couple had ten children.

The family moved to Missouri while it was still frontier. A history of Henry County published in 1919 calls Malcolm "a pioneer settler of Howard County, Missouri, who entered Government land in that county nearly a century ago." To enter land was to claim it from the federal government at the land office and pay for it. Howard County, on the Missouri River, was the Boonslick country, the first part of central Missouri to fill with settlers from Kentucky and Tennessee. His sons Henry Harlan, born in 1820, and Robert, born on 18 July 1826, were both born there. The same history adds that before coming to Missouri the Graggs had lived in Illinois.

In the 1830s Malcolm moved his family west. The sketch of his son Robert in the county history of 1883 gives the route: "In or about 1833 they came to Missouri and located in Pettis County, where they lived some three years, moving in 1836 to Rives (now Henry) County, and settling on Deepwater, on what is now known as the 'Stone Farm.'" He entered that tract. Later, with his brother Robert Gragg, "he entered all of the timber land on what is known as Camp Branch. They both built houses on the creek and remained there until their deaths."

They were among the first families on that ground. The same sketch says that when Malcolm settled there, "only three families lived on the south side of Grand River for miles in either direction." The township history names "Mr. M. Gragg and Robert Gragg" among the settlers of 1839. For two years Malcolm ran a saw mill there driven by horse power, the only one the settlers had besides the Huntley mill on Grand River. Lumber otherwise had to be hauled from Boonville, and most houses had puncheon floors and chimneys of sticks and mud.

Malcolm and Rebecca were among the founding members of the Camp Branch Methodist church, organized in 1850. It had no building and met in the neighborhood schoolhouse. Their son Robert was licensed to preach in 1846 and later served the same congregation as its pastor.

In August 1850 the census taker found Malcolm, 65, a farmer, and Rebecca, 62, both born in Tennessee, in the 16th District of Cass County, on the Henry County line. They were living in the household of their son-in-law William B. Poage and their daughter Mary Ann. In the next entries were Thomas Gragg, 50, a Tennessee-born farmer, with his wife Nancy and six children, and their daughter Susan Jane with her husband William Short.

Rebecca died in the 1850s. Malcolm died on 25 May 1862 in Henry County, in the second year of the Civil War, when Henry County lay in the border country raided by both sides. In 1883 his surviving children were Henry H., Robert M. and William R., Susan Short, Mary Ann Poage and Ellender Crabtree.

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Cite: Heirology, "Malcolm Gragg (1785-1862)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/malcolm-gragg-1785-1862-a8780a.