[1] He was the third son of Sir Sandford Graham, 2nd Baronet, and his wife Caroline Langston, third daughter of John.

[4][5] In 1857–8 he travelled in the Hauran, at the same time as Johann Gottfried Wetzstein, a Prussian diplomat based in Damascus, was also independently journeying and reporting on the area.

Wetzstein's six-week exploration in 1858 was prompted by Carl Ritter, who was aware of a paper Graham had written in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.

Heinrich Kiepert had collated information on Graham's previous travels for a map illustrating a report on those by Wetzstein.

[7] Continuing his journeys, Graham travelled on in 1858–9 to Egypt, sailed to Arabia, and returned overland to Cairo.

[11] During this period the British government released, with other documents, an extended letter from Graham in Beirut to Dufferin on the violence.

[12] At the end of 1861 Macmillan & Co. announced a book Syria as a Province of the Ottoman Empire by Graham; but it apparently never appeared.

At Port-Petrovsk on the Caspian (Makhachkala) they obtained letters from Mikhail Loris-Melikov that facilitated their progress through Dagestan.