John W. Griffith: four years to a day under Sheridan, then Sunny Banks Farm

Born 18 November 1840, Milton Township, Cass County, Michigan

The tie, exactly: a state-line life — born a mile into Michigan, on 18 November 1840, and reared on a farm the state line ran through with the house on the Michigan side; his Indiana ground, and this section's claim on him, is the farm he made after the war: 103 acres, eighty-three of them in Section 10 of Harris Township and twenty of woodland in Milton Township. His father, Mathew Griffith (born 10 March 1811, in Sussex County, Delaware; came to Michigan in 1830; died 28 January 1879), stands in the 1875 atlas directory on Section 7 of Harris — the family's Indiana foothold a generation before the son's purchase.

The war, whole: Griffith enlisted on 1 September 1861 in Company L, 2nd Michigan Cavalry — Colonel Phil Sheridan's regiment — and served four years to a day: Booneville, Perryville, Corinth, Chickamauga, Franklin, Knoxville and Nashville, the sketch's battle list printed as given. It is the fullest individual service course this ground's record carries, and it stands here in the People band, not the fame band, because its distinction is endurance documented, not celebrity.

The course: he married Elizabeth McMichael on 21 February 1866 — she was born 13 May 1841 in Harris Township, a native of this ground — and farmed "Sunny Banks Farm," part of the old Jesse Smith place. Into the household came his adopted nephew, Milton Beardsley Griffith, son of Elizabeth's deceased sister Rebecca (McMichael) Beardsley, whom Howard's sketch calls "a noted musician," head of the Concert of Music at South Bend. The nephew's own entry is not made here: his course belongs to South Bend's music record, and the settling source for it — the South Bend press and concert record — is named in this build's expand note. He is not the Elkhart Beardsleys of the fame band below; no source read shows any relation, and the file prints the surnames' coincidence as a coincidence.

Sources:

1. Howard (1907), vol. 2, biographical sketches — the Griffith sketch whole.
2. Illustrated Historical Atlas (1875), Harris patrons' directory, p. 103 — John W. Griffith (Section 10, settled 1866 as printed) and Mathew Griffith (Section 7).