Two Griffin pioneer families of Cass County

THE GRIFFINS PART 4 OLD LIBERTY GRIFFIN PIONEERS

From “Old Liberty Bill’s” line comes 13 children with his wife, Ann Lamirah Burkhalter, 12 of whom made the trip from Dade County in the Northwest corner of Georgia and Mc-Minn County in Southeast Tennessee to Cass County. The firstborn, the Rev. James Washington Griffin (1831-1919) married Rebecca Jane Ramsey (1835-89) in Rising Fawn on February 28, 1853; Rachel Jane (1832-82) who married Ebenezer J. Frazier, (1795-1864) Mary Ann (1835-74), the first wife of Michael Sellers Burkhalter (18321877), Nancy Matilda (1837-1868) who married Edmond B. Castle, 1832-?) Sarah . Elizabeth, (1839-1919) the second wife of Michael Sellers Burkhalter, William Robert (18411911) who married Sarah M. Palmar, (1843-1864) Isaac Templeton (1844-1912) who married Emma Josephine Nicholls, (1850-1923) Auswell/Oswell Sergeant (1846-91) who married Margaret Ann Frazier, (1843-76) John Price who married Nancy Virginia Walker, General OJ. (184960), who died at age 11, Osborne C., (1851-71) who died at age 21, and Susan Ann (1852-1930) who married Joseph T. Portcrfield, (1850-?) nephew of the Rev. Nelson Porterfield. Rev. Porterfield had pastored several churches in East Texas and Southwest Arkansas including Macedonia Baptist Church at Brightstar, Arkansas. Susan’s sister, Nancy, was a founding member of the church and is buried in the cemetery there.

Bill III and Rev. “J.W.,” followed the Rev. Michael Burkhalter Sr., (1795-1864) who married Bill’s older sister, Eliza Jane Griffin (1798-1863), after both had met at Edgefield, SC, and accompanied their families to McMinn County, Tennessee. The Burkhalters arrived in Cass County in time for the 1850 Census.

The firstborn, the Rev. James Washington Griffin, was the writer’s g-g grandfather. He was the earliest pastor at Old Liberty, when it was called Enon Primitive (Hardshell) Baptist Church. He was born near Red Clay, in McMinn County, Tennessee in 1825 and married at Rising Fawn, Georgia before accompanying his father, “Bill III,” as part of the Griffin wagons who left for Cass County after their Cherokee neighbors were Removed.

“J.W.,” as he was called, was defrocked, however, because he made some of the finest fermented Muscadine wine (brandy) available in Cass County. There is also a story that he once stumbled onto the camp of the notorious Cullen Baker while hunting. The outlaw offered him a swig of his whiskey, which he stated he was “obliged” to drink. One of J.W.’s sons, a fiery Primitive Baptist preacher himself, the Rev. James Sergeant Griffin, complained to the Church leadership that his father was “overindulging” and might be abusing the “grace” of 1 Timothy 5:23 with the bottle and had him disfellowshipped. They were not on speaking terms until he was near death. “J.W.” eventually was back in the grace of the church, his son publishing a column in the Atlanta newspaper expressing his remorse for slandering his father. His tombstone today is a pulpit towering over the names of his and his wife, Rebecca Jane Ramsey and their 10 children the first generation of Griffins born in either Queen City or Courtland: William Sidney was born and died in 1854, Samuel Madison (1856-1929) married Margaret Ann Cummings (18541937), Simon Robert (1858-1936), married firstly Belle Caroline Bobo (1865-1902) and secondly, Sarah Emaline Heath (1886-1948); George Washington (1860-1951) married firstly Elizabeth Ann Thompson (1860-1901) and resided on the Griffin farm at Knights Bluff, and secondly Zoar Alice McMillan, (1879-1973) in Haskell County Oklahoma on a Choctaw homestead he fanned until August 1945 and then moved to Amarillo, Texas. Rev. James Sergeant (1862-1942) who married Francis Samuella Elizabeth Thompson, (18621935), Rufus Elbert (1866-1886), John Michael (1868-1941) who married firstly Mary Magdalene Bobo (1868-1900) and secondly Martha Emma Powell, (1876-1935) Mary Lamirah (1869-1947) married Serurer Green Prator, (1858-1900); Amanda Irene (1872-1956) married Henry Frank Duncan (1867-1905); and Emma Josephine (1874-1908) married Emmett Harvey Ball (1869-1946).

The good reverend’s fourth-born son, George Washington Griffin was the writer’s great-grandfather. In 1898-99, he was part of a construction gang for the T&P Railroad. There he learned the art of roasting Mexican green chili peppers. Before he moved to Choctaw Territory in today’s Oklahoma and eventually to Amarillo, Texas, where he is buried, he ran a chili parlor in Atlanta. He was known as “Chili Griffin” or “Chili King of Cass County.” (HAVE A PHOTO OF HIM) George Washington and his first wife Elizabeth Ann Thompson named their second born son, “Elbert Washington Griffin,” (1883 1965), the writer’s grandfather. This continued a stream of five generations of 32nd and 33rd Degree Masons honoring their Virginia neighbor, fellow Mason, President George Washington. Elbert, known throughout Queen City and Atlanta as “the shoe man,” owned the shoe repair shop concealed by a cane row between it and the Queen City cotton gin. The writer helped his grandfather plant some of the cane rows some 69 years ago to muffle the sound of the trains rolling over adjoining tracks. Growing up, the cane row also made for some ominous and memorable “switches.” Elbert built a combination buggy garage and outhouse between the shoe shop and the cane row to the South where he kept a solitary milk cow who kept his back yard “mowed” when chained to the clothes line, and was fed mostly table scraps. Grandpa Egbert also continued the Griffin “recipe,” he learned from his grandfather, “J.W.” and passed on to “future generations.” On one occasion when one of those “future generations” was about 10, someone who made a trip to the outhouse, neglected to cover the barrel of • fermenting Muscadine and before long every neighbor in the area was witnessing a staggering cow who had busted out of the garage and was bellowing its “joy” headed toward the cotton gin. Since there were three candidates to choose from, we all had to go out our own “devices of discipline” and all got switched ... really good.

Elbert and his second wife, Maudie Westmoreland Griffin, raised three children before she died in May 1948 in a Shreveport sanitarium. Her Caddo Parish death notice in the 1948 Louisiana Statewide Death Index, states she was “Negro/black” (Mulatto). Her Louisiana Death Certificate which lists her race as “W” is unsigned by anyone in the family. An older brother and two younger brothers all died unmarried without children after their grandfather, Joseph Riley Westmoreland was lynched by the KKK near Brightstar, Arkansas in 1883.

The eldest son of Elbert and Maudie was Odis Elbert Griffin (1908-1990). He survived the Bataan Death March and three years in a Japanese P.O.W. camp in the Philippines awaiting the return of General Douglas MacArthur. He was a highly decorated war hero for several acts of courage. He never sired children. Opal Eleanor Griffin Reed, (19122003), battled in her youth with polio in an iron lung, which stunted her growth to about 4 feet. Opal also never had children. She became a career agent with the Internal Revenue Service in Boston and later Kansas City before returning to Atlanta with her husband, Norman Reed, at her retirement. Dell Nowlin Griffin, (1915-2006), was the first to enlist in the U.S. Army from his home in Vivian, Louisiana, during World War II and the last to return from his station with a joint British American operation in North Africa. He remained behind for about four years to help direct the salvaging operation and rebuilding of the Khartoum region of the Sudan and along the Blue Nile primarily with Italian artisans and Arab prisoners of war under his charge as the ranking N.C.O.

Grandma Maudie Griffin was also an activist in the 1920s-1930s, specifically protesting the “Unwritten Code” of the Masonic Order. It was then and remains today the practice of Masons to give preferential treatment to fellow Masons including in courts of law when there is a Masonic prosecutor, lawyer, or judge. This occurred after Masonic ties were evidenced in connection with the 1915 murder of Maude’s younger brother, the convicted murderer, his uncle, and the son of a justice of the peace in Brightstar who also a high-degree Mason was sentenced to only four years. Even though Maude’s husband, Elbert was himself a 32nd degree Mason in line of 32nd and 33rd degree Masonic Griffins with the middle name “Washington,” she forbade both her sons, Odis, and Dell from joining the order ‘under threat of being disinherited.” Her death preceded Elbert Washington by 17 years and she was buried with a Silver Medallion Woodsmen of the World memorial (which looks like a tree trunk) in the Olive Branch Methodist Church Cemetery at Brightstar, Arkansas, with the majority of her mulatto Westmoreland family. When Elbert died after remarrying — a Masonic widow — it was agreed that he could not share a tombstone with Maude if it had a Masonic emblem. But since Grandpa Elbert also was a member of the “Oddfellows” lodge, that emblem was allowed on the joint tombstone that replaced the tree trunk but also showed her Silver Medallion. THE END