Jay Charles Grahm / William James Walker

1850s–1870s

Born William James Walker about 1856–1862 in Apollo, Pennsylvania, to James Walker and Hannah Townsend, one of a dozen children raised in Washington Township, Westmoreland County.

1880s

A farmer in 1880, married about 1879 to Margaret Haymaker. Left his wife and children in May 1885 and went west to Nebraska, Colorado, and Arizona. In 1889 returned to Pennsylvania to refute newspaper reports that he had been sentenced to hang.

1890s

As J. Charles Grahm, married Annie Frances Brown in Yuma, Colorado, on 4 March 1890. Took a timber claim, then farmed near Fort Morgan. Children Ralph, Gladys, Beulah, and Ethel were born.

1900s

Farmed east of Fort Morgan, sheared sheep, served as constable and assistant town marshal, and ran a livery stable. Fern (1902) and Clarence (1908) were born.

1910s–1930s

Moved to Fox Island, Washington, in 1910 and grew strawberries. Widowed in 1926, sold the farm, and lived with his daughter Fern in Puyallup until his death on 10 May 1934.

Two Names

The man Meghan's family knew as Jay Charles Grahm began life as William James Walker. He was born in Apollo, Pennsylvania, around 1856 to 1862, one of about a dozen children of James Walker and Hannah Townsend, and grew up in Washington Township, Westmoreland County, where he was farming in 1880. About 1879 he married Margaret Haymaker, and they had children there. In May 1885 William left his wife and family, and by about 1886 he was known to be somewhere in the West.

He spent the late 1880s in Nebraska and Colorado. Around 1888 the Pittsburgh papers printed a lurid story that he had fallen for a woman out west and ambushed and killed a rival for her affections, and in January 1889 they reported that he had been sentenced to hang in Denver. He was in Arizona when he heard, and on February 18, 1889, he arrived in Pennsylvania to take action against the people who had spread the rumor. At some point William Walker became Charles Graham, later spelling the name Grahm, and he went by J. Charles or Jay Grahm for the rest of his life. His daughter Beulah later described him as "a roving cowboy, from a substantial farming family in Pennsylvania. A nephew of Dad's who lived in Colorado was his only relative we ever knew."

Colorado

On March 4, 1890, in Yuma, Colorado, he married Annie Frances Brown, whose family had come to Colorado to take up timber claims. In 1891 he received a 160-acre timber claim in eastern Colorado, and Annie took one of her own the next year, but drought drove them off, and they built a home on Platte Avenue near Fort Morgan with a garden and a field of sugar beets. Their children were Ralph, Gladys (1894), Beulah (1897), Ethel (1899), Fern (1902), and Clarence (1908); another child, born in 1895, appears in the records without a name.

In 1899 Jay bought forty acres east of Fort Morgan and had a five-room house built on it, with a new well, and the next year he sold off thirty acres. He sheared sheep in season, did road work for the county, was appointed constable for his precinct in 1907, served as assistant town marshal, and ran a livery stable. He sat on juries in 1901 and 1904, and in February 1904, at a lodge initiation in the Masonic Hall, he fell while riding the "Pythian goat" but broke no bones.

Fox Island

In 1910 the family decided to leave Colorado, tired of the hot summers and cold winters, and move near Annie's parents in Washington. Jay stayed behind for two months to sell the livery stable while Annie and the children went ahead by train. They settled on a 22-acre farm at Sylvan, on Fox Island in Puget Sound, where strawberries were the main crop until weevils got into them. They always had plenty to eat but were often short of money, and the house never had electricity. At Christmas Jay and his children went into the woods for a tree, and he built it a sturdy stand. His son Clarence died in 1922, at thirteen.

Annie died suddenly in August 1926. Her mother tried to keep house for Jay but found it too much, and his daughters Ethel and Fern came out to help, leaving him cooked meals for the week. He was lonely on the island and at a loss with the milk, cream, butter, and eggs the farm produced. Before long he sold the farm for a little cash, giving his daughters a single weekend to pack up whatever they wanted, and stayed for a while with his daughter Gladys.

Puyallup

Around 1930 Jay settled in a house at 1418 Fifth Avenue Southwest in Puyallup, where his daughter Fern lived with him after she took a teaching job there. He kept the small yard in wonderful shape and always had a good garden, picked blackberries in season, worked at the Washington State Fair during fair week, and on his walks into town liked to stop and visit Paul Wrigley. On summer Sundays Gladys's or Ethel's family would come for him and Fern, and there were big family outings with Ralph's and Beulah's families too, sometimes joined by Ed Loomis's mother, Augusta Lovelace.

In his last year Jay had cancer, and the doctors thought him too old to operate. He could not be left alone, so his son Ralph found a woman to stay with him while Fern was at work. He died at home in Puyallup on May 10, 1934, and was buried at Tacoma Cemetery, where Annie also lies.