Two Griffin pioneer families of Cass County

THE GRIFFINS PART 1 THE GRIFFINS PRIOR TO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION:

One of the most perplexing family trees in Cass County if not all of Texas and the South has been a genealogical “Truth or Consequences” of all those standing and claiming, “I am descended from William Griffin.” The commonality of “Wm’s,” “Jn’s,” “Joseph’s,” “Charlie’s,” “Daniel’s,” and even “Eliza Janes” of the Griffins goes back to the Cimmerian (Kymri) “Gryffyd’s” and “Gruffyd’s” of “Wales.”

Both the nation of Wales and its language were anciently known as “Kymri” and before the surname spread to Scotland and Ireland and England and Western Europe, there was a king in Wales known as “Gryffyd.” Two of the multiple dozens of Williams Griffins arriving from Wales, England, Scotland, and Ireland in the 1700s — are traced to Cass County. But they are not related.

We can now determine that the William “Bill” Griffin III, (1806-72) 12 of whose 13 children with his wife, Ann Lamira Burkhalter, (1812-63), helped found Douglasville, Knights Bluff and Queen City, and the family of William Edward Griffin, (1824-1900) a charter member of the nearby Law’s Chapel Methodist Church, are two different strands of DNA. This is according to a comparison of the two writers’ DNA. One, a fifth-generation direct descendant of g-g-g grandpa “Bill,” resting at Old Liberty Cemetery while Eric Griffin, the husband of guest co-writer, Beth Griffin, is a fourth-generation descendant of John Walter Griffin.

“Bill” and his family arrived in Cass County in 1853, the same year John Walter and his brother William Edward Griffin arrived and settled initially in Douglasville. William Edward is buried at Laws Chapel Methodist Church. “Bill” III was one of the first missionaries at the Old Cherokee Settlement on Black Bayou, (today the Courtland Church) and later the first “Secretary” of Enon Primitive Baptist Church, which became the “Old Liberty Church” near Antioch. While they were neighbors in Douglasville and in the faith, those Methodists and “Hardshell” Baptists did not intermarry!

Before separate strands of DNA made it possible to begin sorting these family lines, the task had been a genealogical nightmare ... many sleepless nights by many researchers ... and a royal pain for the Cherokee Nation since the mid-1800s.

Relations of “William Griffin” are at the top of the “wanna be Cherokee” watch list and this generation of Bill’s line would add “and proud of still wanting to be.!”

Both lines hail in America from the same region of Virginia around the same time, in the early 1700s; then both passed through North Carolina and on to South Carolina. But “Bill’s” family — traders who intermarried with the Monacan, Manahoac, Tutelo, Occaneechi, Sara, and other Native Nations collectively known as the “Sappony” (Sioux), the Yuchi, Catawba, Creek, Choctaw and eventually one line with the Cherokee — traveled back and forth to the Pendleton District of what became South Carolina. There, Bill’s great-grandfather owned a trading post at a spot known as “Ninety-Six.” By 1732, after smallpox decimated the Sappony and the Catawba, the Griffins were trading with the Cherokee. Joseph Griffin, the brother of William f was called a “trader” in the records when he mortgaged his share of their father’s land to purchase trade goods to secure deerskins then in demand in Europe from the Cherokee. Joseph had married Ann Elders, the daughter of William Elders, one of the earliest traders among the Cherokee. After Joseph had died, she remarried to James Holmes, and together they continued trading with the Cherokee. After Joseph’s death, Thomas Nightingale, a merchant, and saddler involved in supporting the Cherokee trade business, raised Joseph Griffin’s children.

Wm Griffin, Joseph’s brother and “Bill’s” great-grandfather, who mortgaged his own inheritance in 1737. entered the Cherokee trade as well. The “Cherokee Path” these Griffin brothers and other traders took into the Cherokee Nation went from Charleston near the Nightingale-Griffin plantation, then up along the Congaree River through Amelia Township, before going to the Cherokee town of Keowee. At this time Keowee was the gateway to all the other towns and villages of the Cherokee people in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.

Up the Path but before arriving at any of the Cherokee towns, traders, their packmen, and their teams of packhorses often congregated at “Ninety-Six” where the trail crossed from the Saluda/Congaree River basin into the Savannah River basin. “Ninety-six” is the spot where the trail went between a number of small creeks flowing east and then a number of small creeks flowing west. This was captured on early maps with “96” appearing on its side to designate the peculiar anomaly along the Path.

Thomas Brown, the Catawba trader, was one of the first to acquire land at “96.”. He did so in 1738. Wm Griffin who assisted Brown died sometime after 1744. While each trader had their own towns assigned to them within the Native Nations, “96” became a common place for them to gather. It was also where they maintained pens for their horses.

Through mtDNA tests, at least three daughters born to Thomas Waters and his mixed blood Griffin wife, Coosaponakee, have been identified. She is often called the Pocahontas of Georgia, serving as an interpreter for General Oglethorpe with the Catawba. She was also known by founder of Methodism, John Wesley, who wrote of her in his journals. According to later records, one of Waters’ other daughters was the wife of George Guess, aka Sequoia, the creator of the Cherokee Syllabary and first editor of The Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper published in America. The Griffins also had other families still involved in the Cherokee trade. Wm Griffin Jr., father of “Bill,” was a personal friend of Sequoia and a fellow trader along the same “Cherokee Path” with Dan’l Ross, father of Cherokee Nation Principal Chief John Ross. The elder Ross had owned several hundred acres near “Ninety-Six.”

The widow of Joseph Griffin, Anne Elders and her Griffin children with her new husband James Holmes were prominent in the trading business as well, owning both a trading house and stockade at “Ninety-Six.”

To Be Continued