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Submitted: 5/31/15 • Approved: 3/17/19 • Last Updated: 3/20/19 • R770939-G770939-S3
Dec. 1851 Aboite, Allen County, Indiana
Oct. 1, 1885
Daughter of the Marquis de Lafayette Gorham and Eunice Thatcher. Survived by two sons Charles A and Roy.
Murdered by her husband George E Graham. Buried here by the loving citizens of Springfield. Erected AD 2004 by Clifford W. Gorham
Click here for The New York Times Article:
Sarah Graham Murder Newspaper Article
Published September 26, 2004
Last chapter written on 1885 murder victim's life
A Springfield grave will receive a headstone this week on the 119th anniversary of the murder of the woman buried there.
The slaying of Sarah Graham was one of the most sensational crimes ever committed here. The investigation produced lurid headlines in newspapers coast to coast and beyond because it involved an internationally known evangelist. Before it was over, the accused murderer was lynched.
The sordid episode also, however, gave Springfieldians of that day an opportunity to demonstrate their generosity toward the unfortunate victim. Although in life she was unknown here, in death Sarah Graham was afforded an impressive funeral and solemn burial in a casket decorated by an elegant spray of flowers.
But no headstone was placed on the grave in the southwest quadrant of Maple Park Cemetery. That omission will be corrected on Thursday, because a present-day Springfieldian recently discovered that Sarah was his ancestor.
Cliff Gorham — that's right, Gorham, not Graham — has pursued genealogy for half of his 48 years, tracing his ancestry to the 11th century.
Notables include Nathan Gorham, who helped draft the U.S. Constitution, and John Howland, who reached these shores aboard the Mayflower.
Gorham hadn't heard of Sarah Graham until a relative in Chicago sent him information about a branch of the family tree stemming from a great-great-great-grandfather.
"Those documents listed Sarah, and said she was murdered by her husband in 1885 and that he was lynched — in Springfield, Missouri, which just jumped off the page at me," says Gorham. He sought verification at the Greene County Archives and Records Center.
"I started to tell them what I was looking for — but they knew right away what I was talking about," says Gorham. Indeed, the archives staff handed Gorham a reprint of a book that details the story with court transcripts and newspaper accounts.
Here's the gist:
Sarah Gorham married George Graham in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1871.
Soon after, he was sentenced to five years in prison for horse theft, prompting Sarah to divorce him.
Following his release, Sarah remarried George in 1878.
The next year the state of Indiana locked him up for forgery. Sarah resisted her family's urging to divorce George a second time, because the couple had two sons.
While in prison, George attended a meeting featuring Emma Molloy, a leader of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union who had gained prominence throughout the United States, and even Europe, by appearing at church revivals and preaching against alcohol.
After serving the forgery term, George sought out Molloy, who gave him a job at a newspaper she was publishing in Laporte, Ind. He followed the next four years as she moved her operations to Illinois, Kansas and the Ozarks.
Although Sarah and their two boys lived with George during some of this odyssey across the Midwest, George also became friendly with Cora A. Lee, who had been hired by Emma Molloy as a seamstress but came to be described as Emma's "adopted daughter."
When they set up housekeeping on a farm southwest of Springfield on Brookline Road in early 1885, Emma was 46 years old, George was 34 and Cora was 24. On July 18, George and Cora were married by a local Congregationalist minister.
Sarah hadn't accompanied George to Springfield, returning instead to Fort Wayne. That September, she and George met in St. Louis and, along with the boys, traveled by train to Springfield, arriving on Sept. 30.
Sarah promptly disappeared, while George and the kids joined Cora and Emma on the farm.
As Christmas approached with no word from Sarah, her family in Indiana grew worried. Relatives made inquiries and journeyed to Springfield in search of Sarah.
When they learned George had married Cora, Sarah's kin swore out a warrant for bigamy. This, along with some bad checks traced to him, landed George in the Greene County jail.
The mystery became newspaper fodder far and wide because of Emma's prominence — especially after reports surfaced that Emma and Cora and George seemed especially cozy before moving to Springfield, even sharing the same hotel room while traveling from one church revival to the next.
Worst fears were realized, and news coverage escalated, in February 1886 when Sarah's body was discovered at the bottom of an abandoned well on the farm shared by the controversial trio.
George confessed to killing Sarah, insisting he acted alone. But investigators were unconvinced because of inconsistencies in his account. For instance, he said he'd stabbed Sarah, but her body and clothing bore evidence of a gunshot. Also, he told of dropping the corpse into the well, but officers believed the body had been lowered down — a task that almost certainly would've required at least two persons.
Emma and Cora also came under suspicion and eventually were charged with being accomplices to the murder. Court hearings held in March 1886 further fanned the flames of publicity, especially when George and Sarah's 13-year-old son, Charlie, told of his father, Emma and Cora sharing a bed at home.
Events took an even more ugly turn in the wee hours of April 27, 1886, when a gang of 100 or more masked men forcibly removed George from the Greene County jail, took him to the vicinity of today's Grant Beach Park and hanged him from a tree.
Over the next two years, prosecution continued against Emma and Cora. Eventually they won acquittal or dismissal of all charges.
Where and how Cora spent the remainder of her life is uncertain.
But Emma, apparently trying to outdistance the scandalous publicity, headed west and lived out her years in California and Washington. She eventually resumed her public crusades against alcohol, and died in 1907 at age 68.
George was buried in a plain pine box in an unmarked grave in the "pauper's corner" of Hazelwood Cemetery. There was no ceremony. The only witnesses were the gravediggers and the man who drove the wagon that carried the coffin to the cemetery.
Sarah, however, had received a much more elaborate sendoff on March 3, 1886.
After it became known that her relatives weren't able to have Sarah's remains transported to Indiana for burial there, generous Springfieldians pitched in.
In addition to providing a nice coffin and flowers, local citizens organized an elaborate funeral. Four men volunteered to be pallbearers. A horse-drawn hearse was reserved. The Rev. William H. Osborn, pastor of Christ Episcopal Church, wrote an eloquent eulogy.
Decrying what he termed the "awful deed of wickedness" that had taken Sarah's life, Osborn saluted the throng that overflowed the church at Kimbrough Avenue and Walnut Street: "Let it be said that this community has evinced the existence of a healthful moral sentiment by the direction which it has given its sympathies."
When Cliff Gorham learned of the kindness the community showed to this unfortunate stranger, his distant cousin, he says he broke into tears.
"Back then there were people — there are people today, too — who will rise to the occasion to take care of someone else's loved one," he says. "I am overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude."
Those feelings will be reflected on the old-fashioned tombstone he is having prepared with help from Wommack Monument Co. The inscription on the granite will pay homage to "the loving citizens of Springfield" who saw to it that Sarah received a proper funeral and burial.
"The whole purpose of doing the headstone is to thank the citizens who took care of my relative when she couldn't take care of herself," Gorham says.
In addition to gaining additional respect for his adopted hometown — he moved here from Minnesota by way of Arkansas in 1979 — Gorham also comes away with more additions to his family tree.
"From reading the material I got from the archives, we now know that Sarah had two sons that we hadn't known of previously, and also that she had a brother and a sister that we hadn't known of. So it's been rewarding in that way, too."
The 123-page reprint of the court transcripts and news clippings generated by the murder, the lynching and hearings is available for $3 at the Greene County Archives and Records Center, 1126 Boonville Ave.
Readers of the September issue Ozarks Mountaineer magazine also can find an account researched and written by Larry E. Wood of Joplin.
E-mail former News-Leader associate editor Mike O'Brien via obriencolumn@att.net.
Contributed on 5/31/15 by tslundberg
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Record #: 770939