Bette Nesmith Graham for USD $47.5 million in 1979. At the time, her company employed 200 people and made 25 million bottles of Liquid Paper per year. Bette Nesmith died on May 12, 1980, at the age of 56, in Richardson, Texas. From the start, Graham ran her company with a unique combination of spirituality, egalitarianism, and pragmatism. Raised a Methodist, Graham converted to Christian Science in 1942, and this faith inspired the development of her corporate "Statement of Policy". Part-code of ethics, part-business philosophy, it covered everything from her belief in a "Supreme Being" to a focus on decentralized decision making and
John Nesmith and farsighted men of affairs. John Nesmith became interested in the manufacture of blankets, flannels, printing cloths, sheetings and other textile fabrics and that became eventually his principal vocation. He became agent or part owner in mills in Lowell, Dracut, Chelmsford, Hooksct and other places, and managed those enterprises with almost unvarying and uninterrupted success. He was also a large stockholder in the Merrimack Woolen Mills Company. Appreciating more than any other man the natural advantages of the water powers which have made Lowell what she is, he bethought himself of securing the supply of water in Winnepesaukee and Squam