George Berry Graves was born December 22, 1880 in Hurst,
Pittsylvania County, Virginia. His
secondary education included pharmacy, dentistry and medicine at Sewannee, the
University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. Upon graduation, jobs were hard to find but in 1903 a friend
of his helped him locate a job as a physician for the Southern Pacific Railroad in remotely located Valentine, Jeff Davis County, Texas. At
this writing, the town of Valentine is almost abandoned, but in those days Southern Pacific had
a large roundhouse in which they serviced their railroad engines running
between California and Chicago. With
the railroad business, Valentine was a village of over 2,000 people.
Shortly after moving to Valentine, Dr. Graves was introduced
to his future wife, Sarah Jenkins, at a ten day cowboy revival in nearby
Paisano, Texas by Josephine Jenkins Truett and her husband, pastor Dr. George Truett
who led the revival. The young
couple was married in 1910 as Dr. Graves continued to serve the employees of
Southern Pacific and nearby ranching families. In addition operating his medical office, Dr. Graves
established a drug store to secure a supply of medications for his
patients. One winter night during
a blizzard, Dr. Graves was awakened by knock on the door. A local cowboy had called to ask Dr.
Graves to attend to a sick rancher, and Dr. Graves obliged. However, as a result of this event, Dr. Graves suffered a
bad cold that progressed to pneumonia.
Dr. Graves had suffered from tuberculosis in his youth and he died from
complications of pneumonia on June 7, 1915.
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