James G. Graham (ca. 1817-1860s), a Rowan County carpenter and farmer, is associated by family tradition with building three antebellum farmhouses, all 2-story frame dwellings with Greek Revival detail influenced by Asher Benjamin’s Practical House Carpenter (1830). Part of the Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian rural community in western Rowan County, he married Nancy Burke in 1849 and in 1850 was listed in the census as a head of household and carpenter, aged 33, with $1,600 in real estate plus five slaves. In 1860 he was identified as a farmer and head of a household that included Nancy and daughters Mary, Martha, and Emma. He evidently died during the 1860s, for in 1870 Nancy Graham headed a household that included their children and other members.

The houses attributed to Graham were built for leading local farmers. Though similar in form and detail, they follow different floor plans common in the region. For Robert and Catherine Knox he built a traditional 3-room plan house; for Newberry and Mary Shuford Hall, he built a 3-room plan divided by a center passage; and for Jacob F. Barber he built a center-passage plan dwelling one room deep plus a rear shed and ell. Working for his neighbors, as did many farmer-artisans, Graham may also have built other Greek Revival houses in the county.

• Davyd Foard Hood, The Architecture of Rowan County North Carolina: A Catalogue and History of Surviving 18^th, 19^th, and Early 20^th Century Structures (1983).