Mentor Graham

The bronze is sure of a date the record is not. Graham, who taught grammar and surveying to the young Lincoln at New Salem, came to Blunt in the early 1880s to join his son, Harry Lincoln Graham, on a Dakota homestead. Most accounts give his death as 1886, one as a November day when he died out on his daily walk, not in the house; only a memorial record agrees with the bronze's 1885. Blunt buried him, but in 1933 his remains were moved to Farmers Point Cemetery near Petersburg, Illinois.

What the plaque says

Mentor Graham the man who taught Abraham Lincoln died in this house on October 4th, 1885 Erected 1950 by Guy Barnes family

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• South Dakota State Capitol — 20 mi
  A copper-domed capitol built to end three elections' worth of fighting over where the capital belonged, beside a lake fed by an artesian well with a gas flame burning in it.
• Oahe Dam — 21 mi
  One of the largest rolled-earth dams in the world, dedicated by President Kennedy in 1962, holding back a reservoir that reaches more than 230 miles to Bismarck.
• Verendrye Monument — 22 mi
  The hilltop above Fort Pierre where three children found a lead plate in 1913 that two French brothers had buried in 1743 to claim the West for their king.

More markers nearby

• You Are Now on the 100° Meridian — 0.5 mi
• Medicine Knoll — 2.7 mi
• Fort Sully — 14 mi
• African American Homesteader Community in Sully County — 14 mi