and maintained a close relationship with him.“ He was a Renaissance man. He was always studying, always reading, always creating. He picked up interests and pursued them. So much of it emerged from his religious beliefs.”
Unlike most turn-of-the-century American elites, Graham was a Catholic. His mother came from the rare English family that had remained in the Catholic Church in spite of the Reformation. Agnes raised her children to be devout Catholics, a practice that shaped Graham’ s life and work.
Graham attended Harvard and studied architecture. He graduated in June 1914, just months before the“ Guns of August” commenced the First World War.
Graham and many of his Harvard classmates supported the Allies in their resistance to German aggression. Carey and some fellow Harvard students put their beliefs into action and joined the cause.
Graham volunteered for the French Ambulance Service for three years, risking his life to bring wounded French soldiers to safety. Initially, Graham served in Alsace, before later working in Macedonia. He and fellow driver Dudley Hale were the first Americans to be awarded the Croix de Guerre, France’ s highest military honor. Later, Carey received a second Croix de Guerre, honoring his bravery in the face of unspeakable danger. When the United States entered World War I, Graham was transferred to the U. S. Army’ s 76th Field Artillery and was commissioned as a Lieutenant.
After returning from Europe, Graham made the acquaintance of Elisabeth Foster Millet, an esteemed Boston debutante who had attended boarding school in Europe.
“ She was so popular that she needed to thin out her suitors,” David explains. Elisabeth was an excellent tree climber and decided to place her date book in a small box at the top of a European Beech tree. Potential suitors had to climb the tree to sign her book. Graham not only climbed the tree to ask for a meeting. He wrote her a poem, as well.
They were soon married and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Graham and Elisabeth Carey had three children: Joan, Hilda, and Christopher.
Graham worked for the Boston architectural firm of Bigelow & Wadsworth while pursuing a wide range of other intellectual and aesthetic passions. He taught for a time at Harvard but found his firmest intellectual foundations in the world of Catholic art and aesthetics.
“ He wrote and lectured extensively with a view to communicating his advocacy of a return to a more traditional, spiritual approach to art,” John said. Graham was a prominent member of the Catholic Art Association. He contributed regularly to its journal, Catholic Art Quarterly, and served as its editor. Carey lectured widely on the philosophy of art and craft during his tenure with Catholic Art Quarterly. In 1938, Carey addressed a crowd of 300 at St. Michael’ s College, speaking on the subject of medieval craftsmanship. Carey had recently completed a book entitled What We Mean by Craftsmanship, a study of the history of the field with guidance for practical applications of its methods in the modern day.
“ He believed that art has declined in modern times, because it was no longer rooted in religious and philosophical principles,” John said. Graham admired medieval artisans for the fullness of their knowledge of their tools and their means of production. He abhorred the modern tendency to separate decorative things from functional things. He preferred the notion that useful things could be beautiful, as well. This became a hallmark of Graham’ s life and work.
He took up woodcarving, in addition to silver and goldsmithing. He became a partner in the John Stevens Shop, one of the nation’ s oldest surviving firms. Founded in Newport, Rhode Island in 1705, the John Stevens Shop specializes in handcrafted stone inscriptions.
The Carey family’ s relocation to Vermont took place during the early days of America’ s involvement in World War II. His wife was seriously ill, and he believed a change of location and lifestyle would benefit them in an increasingly turbulent world.“ He was a pioneer in the‘ Back to the Land’ Movement. His experience in World War I had had a profound impact on him,” his grandson David Fedor-Cunningham shares.
Graham moved his family to Benson in 1942 and started Sunrise Farm, a dairy farm where he raised Brown Swiss and Jersey cows. Graham and his daughter, Joan, studied the biodynamic methods of agriculture developed by Rudolf Steiner as part of their preparation for dairy farming. Joan and her husband, Michael, established Trinity Farm in the late 1940s on adjacent property, where they raised Jersey cows. Trinity Farm is still in existence as an organic hay farm.
“ Benson didn’ t necessarily roll out the red carpet,” David said. Graham’ s countercultural sensibilities did not jibe with the deeply conservative sensibilities of Benson, an isolated community rooted in the Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage of most of its residents.
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