Graham Barclay Dennis was born on June 1, 1855 in London, England. His father, Mendenhall John Dennis, was a Presbyterian clergyman, educated at Oxford and Heidelberg, and his mother, Sophia (Kiehl) Dennis, was of German ancestry. The family came to America, and Graham lived as a boy in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and Cincinnati, Ohio, United States.
Dennis left school at the age of fourteen but took a course four years later at Bethany College (1873 - 74).
Dennis became city editor of the Dayton Daily Journal, Dayton, Ohio, in 1875 and, after two years on the city desk, served as business manager for two years.
In the next six years, he engaged in various private enterprises in Dayton. He invented the electric postal canceling machine, organized G. B. Dennis & Company, a general brokerage firm, and established and edited an agricultural newspaper, The Farmer’s Home.
Partly on account of poor health, in May 1885 he moved to Spokane, Washington, where he published the Spokane Miner, 1885-86, and engaged in real estate and mining operations. The population of Spokane was then only 2, 000. The Northern Pacific Railroad had been completed two years before, and the development of the “Inland Empire” was just commencing.
The lode mining industry, which was the foundation of the region’s prosperity, began in the year Dennis arrived with the discovery of the Old Dominion mine, near Colville. About 1891 or 1892, in association with three Chicago men, Dennis bought the mine. He became its manager and expended some $550, 000 on improvements. One showing of ore which had been picked up seemed so promising that the company was offered $1, 000, 000 for the property. Dennis wished to sell, but his partners refused, and after a carload or two had been taken from it the new showing was exhausted.
In the nineties, Dennis was president or treasurer of eight or tin mines. He organized a company to develop the mica deposits of Idaho, was for many years, from its beginning in 1895, president of the Northwest Mining Association and in 1896 represented it at parliamentary hearings in Victoria, B. C., when the mining interests were successful in opposing a proposed 2 percent tax on the gross output of the British Columbia mines.
In 1897, he assisted in drafting a memorial to Congress regarding the revision of the federal mining laws. With his numerous business connections, he combined civic interests.
In the same year, he organized the Spokane Industrial Exposition and served as its vice-president. He was treasurer of Jenkins University, a pioneer educational experiment.
He organized and built the Ross Park Electric Railway, opened in 1889, one of the first electric lines in the West. In 1906, he was the first president of the Pacific Northwest Development League, formed by leading men of the four states.
Dennis had an attractive personality and was forceful in his business leadership. He won confidence because he believed thoroughly in all his enterprises and put his own money into them.
On May 20, 1879 Dennis married Hester L. Bradley of Dayton, Ohio. Besides his widow, living in Spokane, he left three children.
