Jefferson County Online A part of the IAGenWeb and USGenWeb Projects Who's Who in Jefferson County, 1931 Clyde Mansfield Graham

"The Fairfield Daily Ledger"
Friday, August 28, 1931
Front Page

Who's Who In Jefferson County
By Herbert F. McDougal

C. M. GRAHAM

C. M. Graham was the sort of a boy who would try anything once. By the time he was twenty-one he had been the town marshal, a clerk in a store, an ice man and a fruit seller. His activities during that time extended from Iowa to the state of Washington.

He was born in Nevinville, Iowa, July 9, 1881 and attended the public schools in Orient, and then went to the Corning academy, then headed by Dr. T. D. Ewing, who previously had been for nine years the president of Parsons college.

After he was out of school, he became deputy county recorder under his father, leaving that position to become a clerk in the A. B. Turner store in Corning, where he worked with Dan Turner, now governor of the state.

Soon, however, he was stirred by the tales of high salaries in the state of Washington, and and (sic) started for the west. The tales had been too rosy, but he got a job in a store at Wenatchee and then attracted the attention of a fruit grower, who made him a proposition to sell fruit to the tourists. He set up an establishment that branched out into ice cream and cold drinks. A local iceman, with a house full of Columbia river ice, wanted to sell out, so C. M. bought the outfit and turned iceman. At the end of a year,, he had disposed of his interests and turned back to Iowa. He worked in the older Spurgeon's store, along with H. F. Spurgeon, president of the present Spurgeon business. After that he was for a time in Corning but soon went to Grinnell where he formed a partnership with the Graham Stores, the firm name being changed to the Graham & Graham company. The other Graham is a cousin, several times removed, of C. M's.

In 1906 Mr. Graham made the decisive move of his career when he joined the Spurgeon organization and became the manager of Store No. 3 at Villisca. He was a resident of that town when the celebrated axe murders occurred, living within less than a block of the tragedy. Nineteen years ago he came to Fairfield as the manager of the local Spurgeon store, and since that time has been actively engaged in the life of the city.

He is a Methodist, and for fifteen years a member of the official board of that church; for years a Chautauqua trustee and at the present the vice president and the chairman of the retail division of the Chamber of Commerce and a member of the chamber itself.

On Christmas Day, 1906, he married Miss Ina Garnett in Des Moines, the ceremony taking place at the home of the bride's brother. The two had met while she was a music student at Grinnell College. They have one son, Arthur Wesley, manager of a Spurgeon store in Austin, Minn.