Granville Garnett Kemper was born in 1844 in Owen County, Kentucky to Joel Hitt Kemper and Millie Ann Garnett Kemper. He grew up in Kentucky and was a farmer.

Granville served as a private in the Confederate forces during the War Between the States. In September 1862, he was taken prisoner of war while serving in Company C of the 4th Kentucky Cavalry and incarcerated in Camp Morton, Indiana. He was released February 1865 at the end of the war after swearing an oath of allegiance to the Union.

After the Civil War, Granville met and married his first wife, Mary Frances (Fannie) Caruthers, in Russell County, Virginia in 1868. She was the daughter of John F. and Mary (Wyatt) Caruthers and the granddaughter of Edmund Wyatt and Margaret Roe. It is not known how this couple met since their respective residences -- Owen, Kentucky and Russell, Virginia -- are not in proximity with each other.

Granville received his medical degree in 1872 from the University of Louisville School of Medicine – Hospital Medical College in Lexington, Kentucky. Although his practice was primarily in Hopkins County, Texas, he also had practiced in Eastland, Clay, Fannin, and Montague counties.

After his first wife died in 1879, Granville Kemper remarried to Estelle Scudder in 1881 and lived out his life in Hopkins County, Texas.

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