Adam Bland Griffin

ADAM BLAND GRIFFIN

Compiled by Elisha Dawn Barnett

They were married at a place called Towhead on November 6. 1868. The young couple moved with the Griffin family for short stays in Nebraska and Missouri.

In 1869, the clan settled on an eighty acre farm, five miles north of Elk City, Kansas. The area became known as Farm Ridge and the hill on which Griffins settled is called Griffin Hill yet today.

By l884, Adam and Sarah had brought into this world six children. The 80 acre farm could not support the growing clan and Adam decided to set off for the unsettled lands farther west. With their children Edith (27 August .1869), Levi ( August 1871), Homer (8 March 1876). Arthur (1 March 1878), George (18 May 1880) , baby Edna Mae
(1 March 1883), the famiily headed west. They spent one year in Smith County, Kansas and then moved to Lane County, Kansas. It was here that present day Grant Countian, Sherman W. Griffin, was born in April of 1886. That year the Griffin's oldest child, Elizabeth, died on August 3, 1886.

In 1887, Adam took his family to central Nebraska. While living in Frontier County, Nebraska, three Griffin sons were born: John (November 2, 1888) and twins, Knox and Stanley (May 4, 1889). The family moved to near Ansley in Custer County and twin girls Ruth and Rachel were bom on March 27, 1893.

The 1893 crops of central Nebraska were ruined by drought. Adam and Sarah loaded all their belongings and their eleven in two wagons and headed across Kansas in the August sun for the opening of the Cherokee Outlet. Adam made the great land run on September 16, 1893, from a high hill south of Bluff City, Kansas. From this point he followed the old Pond Creek Indian Trail to the place it intersected good water on Pond Creek, some eleven miles west of Renfrow Township. Adam staked his claim to the NW Quarter of Section 10, in Township 28, North of Range 6. He rode to Kingfisher to officially file for the claim.

The Griffins lost their first two sod houses they had built on the claim to the flooding creek that ran from northeast to south-west across the quarter section of land. Their third soddy was to last, and was proclaimed as one of the largest and finest in the county. The family experienced all the joys and sorrows typical of this life. Their six year old son John died the first year they lived on the claim and was buried at nearby Springdale Cemetery. Son Arthur drowned while in the army at Fort Sill on May 27, 1905.

On October 11, 1911, Adam and Sarah sold the farm to their son Sherman for $8,000 and moved to retire in Caldwell. The 6'2" Adam remained very active in his late years and died in much the same exciting manner in which he lived, as he drowned while swimming in Bluff Creek south of Caldwell on August 5, 1925, at the age of 80. Sarah ended her pioneer adventure on November 11, 1929, after 79 years as a pioneer woman living in 11 homes, in 6 states and raising 12 children. Adam and Sarah are buried in the Caldwell Cemetery.

Of their nine children living at the time of Adam and Sarah's death, four were to remain in Oklahoma and raise families and of those four, two children were to live in Grant County all their lives. Homer died (8 March 1976) in Alberta, Canada. George died (14 February 1952) in Vancouver, BC. Stanley moved to California where his children live today. Rachel (Mills) raised three children in Denver and lives there today. Knox and his wife Cora raised their children Lavern, Dorothy, Mildred, Russell, and Charles near Ames, Oklahoma.

Ruth married Erwin Fruits and their children Richard Leon, Thelma Jean, Keith. Kenneth, Merle, Max, Marion, and Bobby Joe were raised near Tonkawa, Oklahoma. ...... Lifetime resident of Grant County Edna Mae married neighbor, John J. Simons, and lived on the quarter southwest of the Griffin Homestead. Their children were Ester, Marguerite (White), Walt,Wes, Elmer, Ruby (Ayers), Kenneth, Edna Mae (Meal), Paulene (Connclly) and Evaline. Edna Mae died 13 February 1961 at Wakita, OK.

Sherman W. married Susie Northcut and lives in Medford to this day. Their children are Opal (Webster). Kennit, and Ruby (Baruth).

Return to William Griffin web page.

Adam Bland Griffin was born 18 June 1845, and raised on a 400 acre farm near Sutton, West Virginia. [He was the son of William Griffin and Elizabeth M. Griffin.] The Griffin farm had to be abandoned during the Civil War and at the end of the war, the William Griffins and their ten living children traveled by steamboat down the Ohio and up the Mississippi and Missouri to Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1865. The Griffin children included: Adam, Sally, Pete, Will, Sam John, Mildred, and Ira. [This list not complete.] Their son Jim had been killed in the Civil War. The Griffins settled near Exira in west central Iowa.

It was while the Griffins lived in Iowa that Adam met and eloped with an eighteen year old native of Peoria, Illinois, by the name of Sarah Ann Wiggins.