John Strother Griffin (1816–1898) was a surgeon attached to the General Stephen W. Kearney expedition from New Mexico to California, a landowner and founder of East Los Angeles and a member of the Common Council of the city of Los Angeles, where he was one of the first university-trained physicians to settle.
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Family
John Strother Griffin was born in Fincastle, Virginia, on June 25, 1816, to John Caswell Griffin and Mary Talbot Hancock, both of Virginia. He had five siblings, George Hancock, William Preston, Julia Elizabeth, Caroline Margaret and Elizabeth Croghan. An uncle was William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and a later brother-in-law was Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston.
His father dying when young John was seven and his mother when he was nine, Griffin was then brought up and given a "classical education" in Louisville, Kentucky, by a maternal uncle, George Hancock.
He was married about 1856 to Louisa M. E. Hayes or Hays of Baltimore, who died in 1888, ten years before Griffin's death on August 23, 1898. Griffin succumbed in his Eastside Los Angeles home, 1109 Downey Ave., where he lived with his nephew and niece, Mr. and Mrs. Hancock M. Johnston, and their children. Funeral services were conducted in the home and at the gravesite in Evergreen Cemetery by Joseph Widney. Pallbearers were J. M. Griffith, Harris Newmark, S. Lazard, Reginaldo Del Valle, Major Ben Truman and James Craig. Besides the Johnsons, he was survived by two nieces, Mrs. George J. Denis and Mrs. William B. Pritchard.
Education
Griffin attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a medical degree in 1837. At that time the university listed his "place of origin" as "Kentucky".
Career
Military
In 1840, Griffin was appointed assistant surgeon in the Army and served under General William J. Worth in Florida and, with the rank of captain, on the Southwest frontier at Fort Gibson, Griffin came to California for the first time with General Kearney on the trek from New Mexico in 1846. He was stationed in San Diego and in Los Angeles in charge of the military hospitals, visited the California Gold Country during the 1849 Gold Rush and was stationed in Benicia until 1852. In that period he was given duty in an expedition against the Yuma Indians on the Colorado River. He was assigned to Washington, D.C., in 1853 and resigned from the service in 1854.
The California Historical Society in 1944 published Griffin's diary relating his wartime experiences, under the title A Doctor Comes to California — The Diary of John S. Griffin, M.D., 1846–1847.
Doctor Griffin's story concerns the hardships endured by General Kearney's small force as it crossed the unknown and trackless deserts, and it recounts what took place in the battles of San Pascual, San Gabriel, La Mesa and Los Angeles, and reveals his methods of treatment for wounds and diseases afflicting the soldiers in his charge. The narrative is most interesting.
Civilian
Before joining the Army, Griffin practiced for three years in Louisville, Kentucky, and returned to Los Angeles after he left the service. In Griffin's obituary, the Los Angeles Times noted that:
Physicians were scarce in those days, and a man with a university education and seventeen years' experience as army surgeon and general pratictioner was instantly welcomed and called to minister to the ailments of all the best people around. Like a circuit rider he journeyed up and down Southern California to answer to the calls of American settlers and Spanish patrons.
Griffin is said to have been the "second pioneer educated physician to arrive in Los Angeles," the first being Richard Den, who came in 1843.
One of his staff was Bridget (Biddy) Mason, who worked for him as a midwife and nurse, becoming known for her herbal remedies. She earned $2.50 a day, considered a good wage for African-American women at that time. In 1856, Mason had been declared a person "free forever" in a successful suit she filed as a slave brought from slave-holding Texas into the free state of California in 1851. The judge rendering the decision was Benjamin Hayes, the brother of Griffin's wife.
Griffin was summoned all the way to San Francisco to advise doctors on the treatment of James King of William, the editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, who had been shot at close range on May 14, 1856, by James P. Casey, whom King had identified in the newspaper as having had a criminal record in New York.
Medical historian John Long Wilson wrote that King, who was active during the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance era:
dared to expose scoundrels in both public and private domains; and by relentlessly pursuing a campaign against them, he changed the course of history in the beleaguered city. It is of special interest to us that the violence erupting as a result of his biting editorials had extraordinary medical dimensions.
Doctors who first treated King had inserted a sponge into the bullet wound to stanch the bleeding and were debating whether to remove it in order to fight a severe infection that had arisen. After examining King on May 18, Griffin advised against the removal, fearing hemorrhage from a severed subclavian artery. King died on May 20. Casey was soon executed after a "trial" arranged by the Vigilance Committee.
Legacy
Griffin Avenue in Montecito Heights and Lincoln Heights is named for him.
