Logan Griffin & Mary Wesson

Is a man who has met with more than average success in pursuing the calling of a farmer, and in a great measure this is owing to his desire to keep out of the beaten path, and to his energy and readiness to adopt new and improved methods in connection with his calling.

      He has been a resident of Union County, Ark. Since 1844 and his present estate comprises about 600 acres of land, about 160 of which are under cultivation which yields about one third bales of cotton and twenty bushels of corn to the acre. He has given considerable attention to saw and grist milling. And to the operation of a cotton gin and from these realized a paying profit.

       He was born in Benton County, Ala. March 8, 1820, being the second of five children born to John and Elizabeth (Hilton)Griffin, the former born in Tennessee and the latter on Blue Grass soil. They were married in the former state in 1815, but from that time until about 1848 they were residents of Alabama the rest of their days being spent in Union County, Ark. The father was an active politician, a Democrat in his political views, and served as justice of the peace and bailiff for a number of years in this county.

      Logan Griffin was reared to manhood in Alabama, his education being limited to the common schools and there at the age of twenty-one years he began the battle of life for himself, and was married to Miss Mary Wesson of Benton County, Ala., a daughter of John and Mary Wesson who were natives of Alabama, and reared a large family of children in that State.

To Mr. Griffin’s union a family of nine children was born; Lara B., Minnie, Mary F., Margaret E., Amanda, Virginia E., Logan M., and two children who died while young. All the living children are married, with the exception of Amanda. The mother of these children was called to her long home in 1874, and in 1877 Mr. Griffin too for his second wife Mrs. Amanda (Hill) Ainsworth.

     He was a soldier in the War of 1836, being a private and at the opening of the late Civil War he enlisted in the Confederate army, serving as a private from 1863 until the close of the war in Company I, Col. John Wright’s regiment, participating in a number of skirmishes. He joined the Masonic fraternity in 1855 becoming a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1840, and in his political views is a stanch Democrat.

“Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas” published by the Godspeed publishing company 1890