Graham Family Home (Site)

Here follows a history of the Graham Road Elementary School as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

For whom was Graham Road named?

Graham Road Elementary School was established in 1950. The first Graham Road school opened near the intersection of Graham Road and Route 50. The new or second Graham Road building located on the opposite end of Graham Road at the Lee highway intersection opened in 2012. This structure was originally Devonshire Elementary school. Devonshire opened in 1957 and closed in 1980 due to declining enrollment.
In 2008, the school board voted to close the existing outdated Graham Road school and to renovate, rename and reopen the Devonshire school building. Graham Road Elementary School received its name from Graham Road. The road was named for Neil Ferguson Graham, a local landowner and doctor who practiced medicine in Washington, D.C. Dr. Graham was born in 1840 on a farm near London, Ontario, Canada. He attended Western Reserve Medical College in Cleveland, Ohio, graduating in 1861. During the American Civil War, he was appointed assistant surgeon of the 12th Ohio Volunteers and was promoted several times throughout the course of the war. While working as an army surgeon he became enamored with Harriet Augusta Southgate, a hospital nurse. Harriet was the daughter of Reverend Horatio Southgate and Elizabeth Brown. During the 1840's, Reverend Southgate served as a missionary bishop to the Ottoman Empire in the regions of Turkey and Persia. Harriet was born in 1842 while the Southgates were living in the city of Constantinople. She married Dr. Graham in April 1865 and the couple had six children. The Grahams lived in Ohio and Minnesota for a few years, moving to Fairfax County near Falls Church in the early 1870's.
Their home was located at the intersection of West Street and Lee Highway where this shopping center stands today. This map of Fairfax County made in 1878 shows the location of Dr. Graham's home. It also shows the location of Harriet's father's home in Falls Church when Reverend Southgate briefly served as rector of the Falls Church from 1872 to 1902. Neil Ferguson Graham was a professor in surgery at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Harriet Graham passed away in 1911 and Neil Graham passed away in 1928.
The Grahams are buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.