N E Griffin, b 15 Jan 1849

DALTON

Posted By: Donna Moldt Walker (email)
Date: 2/20/2004 at 11:33:45

N. E. Griffin is engaged in the manufacture of wagons and carriages in Andrew, and has established his business on a solid financial basis. He is a man of high standing in this community, where his genial, courteous bearing, and kindly, tolerant spirit have gained him many warm friends. He is a veteran of the late war, and although when he enlisted, during the last year of the Rebellion, he was but a boy of sixteen years, yet he fought as bravely and well as many a soldier older in years and inured to the hardships and privations of war.

Our subject is a native of Jackson County, born in Perry Township, Jan. 15, 1849. He was reared on the home farm, and received the foundation of his education in the local schools. Feb. 10, 1865, with boyish enthusiasm, he determined to enter the ranks with the other brave defenders of our country's honor, and do what he could to help save the Union, and on that day he was enrolled as a member of Company H, 174th Iowa Infantry. He was mustered in at Camp Fry, and immediately dispatched to the front with his regiment, and was soon fighting bushwhackers at Dalton, Ga., and taking part in various skirmishes and engagements, and at Spring Place, Ga., his regiment was instrumental in breaking up Edmundson's guerrilla band. Mr. Griffin and his comrades engaged in the battles of Sherman's campain from Dalton to Resaca, and were present at the surrender of Gen. Wanford, at Kingston, Ga.; and they were then sent to Hawkinsville, and two weeks later to Savannah, Ga.; Dec. 3, 1865, they were dispatched to Rightsborough, Ga., where they remained until the 20th of the following January, and then returned to Savannah, where they were mustered out, and received their final discharge papers at Camp Butler, Ill., Feb. 8, 1866.

After his military experience of one year Mr. Griffin returned home, and the following four years he was unable to do any hard labor on account of the state of his health, which had been much impaired by disease contracted in the South. But during this enforced leisure of the body his mind was not idle, as he resumed his studies, eagerly desirous to extend his education, and prepared himself for the Iowa University. In 1868 he became a student of that institution, and in the two years that ensued pursued a fine scientific course. In the spring of 1870 he went to Jasper County, Mo., and thence to Cherokee County, Kan., where he took up a tract of 160 acres of land. But disliking that country he returned to Iowa, and at Lamond apprenticed himself to a wagonmaker to learn his trade. His apprenticeship lasted two years, and he worked at the trade in the same place another year. In February, 1874, he went to Walker, in Linn County, and opened a shop for the manufacture of carriages and wagons. He carried on the same business there three years, and in 1877, returning to Lamont, engaged in farming two years. He had to abandon that calling, however, on account of his leg that had been injured in the army. He then engaged in teaching school in that town until the spring of 1884, when he came to Andrew and established his present business, buying some land erecting carriage shops, etc., and he now owns a good residence and a half a block.

Mr. Griffin was married, in Fairplay, Wis., Feb. 8, 1874, to Miss Julia E. Dalton. She is a native of Tioga County, Pa. Her father was a farmer. Of the wedded life of our subject and his wife, seven children have been born - Ettie, Jane, Bertha, David, Charles W., Alvin and Harland. Mrs. Griffin is a sincere Christian, and an esteemed member of the United Presbyterian Church.

Mr. Griffin is a man of fine understanding, with a well trained and well informed mind. He is strong in his convictions, is thoroughly alive to the evils of intemperance, and believes in prohibition as a measure for their suppression, and gives his hearty support to the political party that advocates it, and has been a delegate to its county conventions. He has served on the United States Petit Jury.

("Portrait and Biographical Album of Jackson County, Iowa", originally published in 1889, by the Chapman Brothers, of Chicago, Illinois)