If any one hire an ox, and God strike it that it die, the man who hired it shall swear by God and be considered guiltless.
Griffith was born on January 22, 1875, on a farm in Oldham County, Kentucky, the son of Jacob Wark “Roaring Jake” Griffith, a Confederate Army colonel in the American Civil War who was elected as a Kentucky state legislator, and Mary Perkins (née Oglesby).