California Genealogical Society blog: Griffin Collection

04 May 2021

Now online: Documents from the Griffin Collection

Posted by Chris Pattillo

By Chris Pattilo

The newest addition to the CGS website is a set of documents from the Griffin Manuscripts Collection. Member Stewart Traiman scanned the material and created a detailed list of the contents, which include marriage, death and other vital records, wills, deeds, personal notes, genealogical worksheets and a few photos for multiple generations of the Charles Griffin family as well as allied lines including Ashfield, Benson, Blatchford, Deboy, Dudley, Haverhill, Maxwell, Taylor and more.

Captain Francis Marion Griffin of
Boston, 1909: from the Griffin Collection

Dr. Charles Francis Griffin was the tenth president of the California Genealogical Society (CGS). He served from 1923 to 1931. He was born 26 April 1869 in Lassen County, California, the son of Francis Marion Griffin and Margaret Malloy Griffin. Griffin attended school in Vallejo, California, and Cooper Medical College in San Francisco. He received an MD degree from Stanford University in 1891, and practiced medicine in San Francisco.

In addition to being an active member of CGS, Dr. Griffin was a contributing member of the California Historical Society. In that capacity he compiled an Index to the Annals of San Francisco which was published in 1935. He was also an officer in the Society of Mayflower Descendants for many years.

Dr. Griffin was killed in a bus accident in Guerneville, California, on 23 December 1950. Upon his death his estate donated his vast collection of genealogical books to CGS.[1]

To browse the Griffin Collection via our website, log in and go to the Research Tab, select "Online Resources" from the pull down menu, and scroll down to Resources Developed by CGS Members, where you will find a link to the Charles Francis Griffin M.D. Collection. Note: These online collections do not include everything held by our library because some items are under copyright. To view the entire collection you’ll need to visit the library when it reopens.

[1] Information gleaned from an article written by A.T. Leonard, Jr. for California Historical Society Quarterly, 1 March 1951, and from previous CGS blog articles.

12 February 2021

A Wee Book In The Griffin Collection of our Library

Posted by Chris Pattillo

A tiny book from the Griffin Collection

By Chris Pattillo

Yesterday I picked up boxes 10 through 13 of the Griffin Collection from our manuscripts room and delivered them to Stewart Traiman in Alameda, who has been scanning and indexing the material in the collection. This is part of our ongoing project to digitize our collections and make them available online. When I arrived at Stewart’s we exchanged the new boxes for the ones that he had finished scanning. While I was there Stewart showed me one of the many items contained in the collection - the little book pictured above. You can see how tiny it is–about two inches by four inches. It has a black leather cover and only a few pages. The text on the first page says, “Genealogical Records of the Griffith Family copied from an old Bible belonging to Philip Griffith of Clarksburg Maryland.”

This item is just one of hundreds in the collection, which includes photographs, an assortment of family trees, official documents and myriad other family records. This is the second set of records that Stewart has scanned and indexed. Previously he scanned the John Ellis Hale Collection which has been uploaded to our website. You can find it on the Research page under Online Resources. The photo on that pagewas taken inside the manuscripts room. Each time we meet to exchange material Stewart makes a point of sharing one of the special items he has found. For me, these exchanges feel like my reward for doing my part, and now I am sharing it with you.