Dr. Thomas E. Griffis, son of English immigrant William Griffis and North Carolina native Sarah Horn, studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. After completing his medical training, he returned home to North Carolina and practiced his profession there for seventeen years. His home in North Carolina, which still stands just outside Haw River, North Carolina, has been restored to its antebellum splendor and is now known as the Griffis-Patton house.
In 1859 the doctor and his family, including his mother and brother, William P. Griffis, moved to Blossom Prairie, Texas, leaving his Alamance County farmland under the supervision of his bachelor brother, Abel. In 1860, Dr. Griffis lived in Clarksville, Red River County, Texas. As was so common, Dr. Griffis' estate was financially devastated by the Civil War. By 1870, he and his family had moved to Paris, Lamar County, Texas.
Dr. Griffis was one of five children, four sons and a daughter. Three of the sons---William P. Griffis, Thomas E. Griffis, and Abel Griffis---all eventually moved to Lamar County from North Carolina.
Dr. Griffis' wife, Margaret Adeline Faucett, died on October 27, 1878, in Blossom, Texas. (There's some discrepancy over whether she died in 1873, 1875, or 1878.) Dr. Griffis continued to practice medicine, to run a large cotton plantation, and to rebuild his fortune. His health failing, Abel Griffis, Thomas E. Griffis' bachelor brother, moved to Texas to be with his brothers and their families.
Dr. Thomas E. Griffis died on February 7, 1903, in Lamar
County, Texas. He is buried in the Griffis Cemetery, Lamar County, Texas.
Surnames connected to the Griffis family