Sgt. Benjamin Graham

Sgt. Benjamin Graham

Obituaries

The Baltimore Sun, Monday, 17 June 1895
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17 June 1895

Sgt. Benjamin Graham, a retired member of the Baltimore Police Department, died yesterday [16, 1895] at his home, located at 2010 Canton Ave. He was in his seventy-sixth year of life. He had been on the police department's retired list since April 22, 1880. His death came as the result of a complication caused by troubles brought about by injuries received while he was on active duty. While on duty eleven years earlier, Sgt. Graham was badly injured after being struck by a coasting sleigh. It was those injuries that caused his retirement from the force and subsequently ended his life. At the time of his service, he was assigned to the Eastern District, where he had served for the last thirteen years of his service.

The sergeant had an eventful career. He was born in Somerset County, Maryland, and started out early in his youth to become a sailor. In his seafaring years, he was shipwrecked twice, sailed around Cape Horn half a dozen times, and made a circuit of the world once. When he was eighteen years old, he was on the ship Mary Kimball, which was wrecked in mid-ocean and whose crew drifted about for several days in the ship's lifeboat until rescued by an English bark and landed at Liverpool. He also served on the ships Governor Davis, Mary Anne, Richard Cobden, and the French bark Lillia of Marseille between the time of his first wreck and 1845. In that year, he went to New Orleans on the transport ship America, from which port she took troops to Vera Cruz for the Mexican War. He was in the Baltimore clipper ship Republic when she was wrecked in 1848 off the coast of Ireland. After that, he was in ships in the South American trade and sailed around to the Pacific, then came back east and entered as second-mate vessels that ran in the China trade. Next, he tried his luck in the California gold fields for about eight months and then came back to Baltimore.

In 1857, Sergeant Graham was appointed to the Baltimore Police Department, where he remained until after the April Riots, with the Massachusetts Troops as they were passing through Baltimore on April 19, 1861. He was compelled to resign due to political differences, but in 1867 he was reappointed to the force and made a sergeant, serving until his retirement. Sgt. Graham was married twice; his second wife and seven children survive him. Mr. George W. Graham, an employee of the Baltimore Post Office, is his son.

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When a coasting sleigh struck Sergeant Benjamin Graham while he was on duty, he suffered complications from the injuries he had sustained approximately 11 years earlier.The injuries caused him to medically retire on April 22nd, 1886. He never fully recovered, and he died on June 16th, 1895, after developing gangrene and septicemia as a result of the initial injury. The exact date and location where the injury occurred are not known.

Sergeant Graham had served with the Baltimore City Police Department for a total of 23 years. His second wife and seven children survived him. Prior to joining the police department in 1857, Sergeant Graham served as a sailor and had been shipwrecked twice.

 

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