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Augustus Graham
(April 15, 1776 - November 27, 1851) U.K. - U.S.A.

Augustus Graham

Founder Unitarian Church

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Graham was born Richard King in Devonshire, England, the son of John King, a hatter and clothier, and Mary Barrons. When he immigrated to the United States he called himself Augustus Graham, and in October, 1806, he married Martha Cock in Frederick County, Maryland. They had two children, one of whom grew to adulthood. In 1808 Graham was issued a certificate of naturalization.

Augustus Graham became one of early Brooklyn's most important civic leaders - a key businessman and philanthropist. When he immigrated to Maryland, he met John Bell, a Scottish immigrant, and they partnered to operate a stagecoach line from Frederick to Baltimore.

The two self-styled "brothers" moved to New York state, and eventually to Brooklyn. Stiles wrote, "This simple and romantic scheme [ultimately led to] the happiest result... Their union was always of the most affectionate and confidential character." (After many decades, they drifted apart, maintaining separate households, while still remaining friends. For instance, in their declining years, they continued to share a carriage, but each man hitched his own horses to it.)

Augustus Graham and his lover John (Bell) Graham employed hundreds of Brooklyn's unemployed; addressed the city's chronic alcoholism; helped establish a spiritual alternative to fundamentalism; cared for the city's sick, indigent, and widowed via the Brooklyn Hospital and several retirement homes; and gave Brooklynites unprecedented access to books - thereby laying the foundation for an institution that soon evolved into the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Children's Museum, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Hoogenboom is one of the few scholars to have ever closely studied the legend of Brooklyn's "Brothers Graham."

Their warm acceptance in Brooklyn society during the 1830s is significant, but there was clearly a dark side to it. In the first place, Augustus and John were forced to pretend to the world at large to be brothers.

In 1822, the Brothers Graham cashed out a brewery operation, and then Augustus Graham established a factory for turning lead into white pigment. This pigment business became more successful than anyone would have imagined. Two years later, Augustus established the Apprentices' Library, which offered his young workers educational alternatives to gambling and drunken revelries in the taverns.

The couple, who had made their first small fortune from beer or whiskey, now actively supported the temperance cause. Stiles takes great pains, in his history, to point out that "Mr. Graham directed that neither the lecture room nor any other part of the building should be used for any political purpose, or any exhibition, or any lecture on any subject having an immoral tendency." Later, Augustus helped found the First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn. Stiles explains that he was deeply motivated by a concern for the "neglected portions of the community." The Unitarian church in those days was often being strongly rebuked by fundamentalists for its liberal theology.

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Source: Olive Hoogenboom and Mitchell Santine Gould

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