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).
Dark figure leaps across windblown ice floes; out from a black stand of elms along the shore rush heated, baying thousands in pursuit. Bystander runs up, “What’s he done?”