William Henry Gragg
William Henry Gragg was born in 1845 or 1846 in Henry County, in west central Missouri, the eldest child of Henry Harlan Gragg and his first wife, Polly Ann Gragg. His grandparents Malcolm and Rebecca Gragg had settled on Deepwater Creek in the 1830s among the first families in the county. In the census of 1860 William was fifteen and living with his parents in Deep Water Township of Henry County, with his sister Nancy and his brothers Marion, Robert, Samuel and John and his sister Sarah. His mother died in 1862.
He grew up in Missouri during the Civil War, when Henry County lay in the border country raided by both sides. On 13 December 1863, at eighteen, he married Nancy Jane Cornett in Henry County. Their son Samuel was born about 1865 and their daughter Margaret, called Jennie, about 1867. In 1870 the family was in White Oak Township with Samuel and Margaret.
Their younger son, Emanuel Hamilton Gragg, was born in June 1877. In 1880 the family lived at Montrose in Henry County: William H., 34, Nancy J., 36, Samuel, 15, Jennie, 13, and Emanuel, 5.
A photograph survives of William with his father and three of his brothers. Henry sits in the middle with a white beard. William, the eldest son, stands at the right edge in a bow tie, beside John Alexander, Robert Malcolm and Samuel Francis.
In the 1890s William, his brother Samuel and his son Emanuel, then called Manuel, moved their families south into the Choctaw Nation of Indian Territory, the coal country around McAlester. Emanuel married there in 1896. Nancy died on 15 September 1900, back in Henry County.
William returned to White Oak Township in Henry County. On 10 June 1908 he married Harriett Ellen Short, a Kentucky-born widow then called Schroeder. They were at White Oak in 1910 and 1920. Harriett died in 1920.
William spent his last years in Oklahoma, near his son's family. He died on 1 August 1938 at McCurtain, in Haskell County, at about 93. He was buried in an unmarked grave, plot 8-122-6 of Memorial Park Cemetery.
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Cite: Heirology, "William Henry Gragg (1845-1938)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-henry-gragg-1845-1938-a1c8ee.