Billy Griffin Part 2 – Return to the Irish Wilderness after the Civil War

 Irish Wilderness, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 142021
 

When the Civil War ended, Billy Griffin mustered out of Gen. Marmaduke’s Confederate forces at Batesville, Arkansas, and returned to the Current River area. There he found the community of Irish scattered. His parents had held on but few others. Billy moved his parents to Ironton, but he returned to the area near Wilderness where he lived the rest of his life. Few of the other original settlers ever returned.

In 1868, Billy married Mary Ann Snider, widow of Samuel Cusic Snider and ten years Billy’s senior. Billy and Mary Ann Snider Griffin had three children, Mary Catherine (b. 1869, married name Mrs. Harvey Smith, of Fremont) and Patrick (b. 1871) and John Ruben (b. 1873). The only reference I’ve seen to the two daughters Mary Ann Snider brought into the marriage is in his obituary: “He is also survived by two step-daughters, Mrs. Cusic Brown of Dry Valley, and Mrs. Sarah Hanners of Rockford, Wash., to whom he was a kind and affectionate father.”

The article about their aging cabin made passing mention of the Irish Wilderness: “The Griffins and their neighbors had to travel many miles to mill with their wheat and corn. They went to the mill at Falling Springs or across the Irish Wilderness to Turner’s Mill on Eleven Point River.”

The article continued: “In 1885, the Frisco railroad built the Current River Branch road to Grandin from Willow Springs (see our post on lumber industry in the Wilderness) and the track ran through the Griffin farm on Pine Creek. The logging industry had come into the Ozarks and saw mills sprang up and the pine forests were stripped from the hills of Carter County around the old house.”

Billy Griffin became the source of knowledge about the early settlement for local historians and the curious. The Current Local newspaper in Van Buren interviewed him. Billy gave a detailed account of how the little settlement was created, their trials and difficulties, joys and romances.

But they were happy, those simple people. Happy and industrious in their wilderness. On the Sabbath they had religious services and the monotony of life in the woods was broken by merry making in their cabins. Into their life there came romances and there came sorrow. The young priest was called on to marry the young and to bury the dead. Faithfully he stood by them, cheerfully he encouraged them.

A few years later the sorrows of the civil war … found its way out into that wilderness and the little crops of those simple people were ruthlessly taken and their livestock driven away by skallawags who took advantage of the deplorable conditions of the time. … And the country that had begun to smile under their industrious efforts once more became a wilderness.

This story was told to the editor of Community a number of years ago by “Uncle Billy” Griffin, a respected citizen of Carter County, the last survivor of those colonists. To the writer it seemed a pathetic story and the pathos was all the greater when Uncle Billy said: ‘We came to America, fleeing from persecutions in Ireland. We came far out into the wilderness to make our homes. It was hard for us to understand why Americans, who had always stood for us as the greatest exponents of justice and chivalry, should have robbed us of our homes and our happiness.’

Billy’s two siblings, Thomas and Catherine, lived in the Pilot Knob area. Julia Billingsley shared that Thomas never married; Catherine married David Gunton and had two children who did not marry so the Griffin line continued through Billy.

Billy Griffin died January 4, 1918 at the Alexian Brothers’ Hospital in St. Louis. Blood poisoning was listed as the cause of death. His obituary in the Van Buren newspaper noted, “For fifty years Mr.Griffin was one of the foremost citizens of this section of the country. … Perhaps no man in this section had more friends than ‘Uncle Bill’ Griffin. … He was an honorable gentleman of strong convictions. … He will be greatly missed.”

Billy, Thomas, Catherine and her children, Emmet and Julia, are buried in Pilot Knob Catholic Cemetery – an unmarked cemetery on Middlebrook Road near Ironton. Elizabeth, Billy’s mother is buried in Middlebrook Cemetery about two miles north.

Lens & Pen Press is having a warehouse sale and offering all titles for half price, postage paid.

Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness  and On the Mission in Missouri are available on amazon.com or discounted 50 percent on this website, postage paid.

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Billy Griffin of the Irish Wilderness

 Irish Wilderness  No Responses »
Jun 182021
 

One of the great rewards of researching, writing and publishing our books on the Ozarks has been learning more on the subjects from people who are personally connected with them. Such is the case with our two books on John Joseph Hogan and the Irish Wilderness in Oregon and Ripley counties.

We recently received emails from Juliana Billingsley asking for help researching Billy Griffin, her second great grandfather. Billy Griffin was among the original Irish settlers in Father Hogan’s community in the Ozarks just before the Civil War. Hogan mentioned Billy Griffin several times in his memoir, On the Mission in Missouri. We found Patrick Griffin’s name (Billy’s father) in correspondence with land agents and on deeds to land in the area we identified as areas of the settlement during research for Mystery of the Irish Wilderness.

Conversations with Juliana Billingsley and review of newspaper articles provided additional details on how Billy Griffin and his family came to Father Hogan’s settlement.

June 24, 1843, William (Billy) Griffin was born to Patrick and Elizabeth Delaney Griffin, in Newcastle, West Limerick, Ireland. He was the middle of three children, with older brother Thomas (b. 1838, d. 1914) and younger sister, Katherine (b. 1848, d. 1923).

In 1852, the family emigrated to America. Billy was about 9 years old. According to a substantial obituary in the Van Buren newspaper, the family was in Boston first, then Zanesville, Ohio, then Carondelet, Missouri (near St. Louis). No specific dates known for these different locations.

In 1857, the young Irish priest, John Joseph Hogan was exploring northern Missouri, looking for pioneering Catholics, when he met the railroad contractors, Griffin and Shea. They were from Madison, Indiana, which is on the Ohio River.

The following is pure speculation on my part: Consider that river travel was a major transportation method for settlers moving west in the first half of the 19th century, when railroads were just pushing into the interior of the country. Zanesville, Ohio is on the Muskingum River, which feeds into the Ohio River, a major watery thoroughfare to the West. Follow the Ohio west from Marietta, float past Huntington, West Virginia and Cincinnati, Ohio and the next stop is Madison, Indiana. From there the Ohio is a good conduit to the Mississippi and St. Louis for a family moving west. It is plausible that Griffin (Patrick and/or Billy) connected with Shea there in Madison and got a job, which took him to the prairies of north Missouri and a chance encounter with a traveling priest,

When Hogan visited the railroad camp near Breckenridge in Caldwell County, west of Chillicothe, Billy Griffin would have been about 14 years old. Perhaps he was there with his family. Some families were with the railroad contractors as Hogan noted baptizing two children.

“Returning eastward I stopped for the night near where Breckenridge now is, at a place then called Garryowen—the camp of Griffin and Shea—railroad contractors from Madison, Indiana, who with a band of good sober men were at work on the grade of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. There, on the evening of August 12th, I baptized two children of the pious edifying railroad community. Garryowen and Billy Griffin had so many attractions for me, and were so intimately associated, in name at least, with places and persons dear to me since childhood, that I stayed there, though aside from the purpose of my journey, a day and night longer.”

 On the Mission, page 40

Imagine the nostalgic conversations around the evening fire as they shared memories of County Limerick and the Irish city of Garryowen .

Then a year later (1858), we find Patrick Griffin’s name listed in a report from the Land Agent, saying the acreage he had paid on was already sold to another:

“JACKSON, Mo., APRIL 30, 1858. I find from examination that the following tracts, applied for by you, have been sold, to-wit; application of James Murray, North West 1/4, and lot I North East 1/4, Section 6; application of Denis Sullivan, South West 1/4, Section 21; application of Denis Hurley, South West 1/4 Section 24, application of Thomas Mulvehille, South East 1/4, Section 22; application of Michael Mara, North 1/2, Section 22; application of Stephen McNamara, West 1/2, Section 23; application of Patrick Griffin, South 1/2 of North East 1/4, Section 36; application of Patrick Rowe, North West 1/4, Section 30. All these have been sold to others. Very respectfully, G. W. FERGUSON.”

On the Mission, page 64

The Iron Mountain Railroad, which would run from St. Louis to Texarkana, Arkansas, was under construction then, a possible source of employment for the Griffins. Billy was 15 by that time. In Mystery of the Irish Wilderness, we listed Billy’s father, Patrick Griffin, as a likely settler in Ripley County.

When the War came with its violent disruptions and savage ebb and flow of forces, Billy Griffin joined the Confederate Army, which would not have sat well with Father Hogan.  But wars make decisions for individuals.

Lens & Pen Press is having a warehouse sale and offering all titles for half price, postage paid.

Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness  and On the Mission in Missouri are available on amazon.com or discounted 50 percent on this website, postage paid.

Visit Lens & Pen YouTube channel