Watty Graham

Walter (Watty) Graham (also called Watty Grimes) (1763–1798) was a farmer and Presbyterian Church elder in the north of Ireland who was executed for his role as a United Irishman in the Rebellion of 1798.

Graham was born outside Maghera, County Londonderry, where, like his father, he was an elder of the local Presbyterian church. During the revival of the Irish Volunteer movement in the early 1790s, the church minister, John Glendy, regularly advanced theological justifications for democratic reform, and celebrated the French Revolution. In a sermon that Graham and other congregants had reported, with a vote of thanks, in the United Irish newspaper, Northern Star, Glendy hailed the French victory at Valmy in September 1792 as "the signal interposition of heaven on behalf of the French Nation and Universal Rights of Conscience"

As a delegate to Presbyterian synods in Lurgan 1793, Graham made contact with the leadership of the United Irishmen In the face of a new martial-law regime, and in the hope of French assistance, they began to organise for a republican insurrection

With his congregants in Maghera, Graham formed a new volunteer corps under the United Irish county command of William McKeever, a Roman Catholic. After the French example, they styled themselves the National Guard. When the call came, Maghera was to rise simultaneously with Toome and Randalstown, disarm the local forces of the Protestant (Church of Ireland) Ascendancy—the yeomanry and Orangemen—and march, as needed, to join rebels from Antrim. and 5,000 Father Matthew McCusker, however, is recorded as giving last rites to an insurgent in the town on the 8th, and the priest later organised surrender of arms. What really happened was that Graham surrendered the Crew arms to Col Leith and Cunningham on the Glen road in the evening of the 7th of June and was taken captive, he was quickly court martialled and half hanged outside the Church of Ireland Manse, he was then dragged up the road and head removed. This was a successful attempt to get those still holding out on Dunleady hill fort to surrender, Dunleady surrendered the following day. It was reported in a letter published in the Belfast Newsletter on 9 June that Walter Graham had been executed.

Henry Cooke, the later conservative and loyalist Presbyterian Church leader, recalled seeing soldiers burning Graham's house on the 4th of June.

Graham's wife and daughter (whose names are unrecorded) eventually emigrated to the United States.