James Franklin Griffith. Now in his second term as county attorney of Kiowa County, James Franklin Griffith is a lawyer with a long and broad range of experience, having been admitted to the bar in Texas and having practiced in that state for a number of years before moving to Oklahoma Territory. Whether in private practice or in official work, his efficiency, thorough integrity, and capable talents have won him a deserved reputation.

A Texan by birth, he was born in Grimes County, February 4, 1867. The Griffith family is one of the* oldest of Alabama, where his father, James Griffith, was born in 1824. From Alabama he went to Texas as a young man, was one of the early settlers in Grimes County, and was married there to Miss Isabella Wooderson, who was born in Texas in the year of Independence of the Texas Republic, 1836. She died in Grimes County in 1874. At the outbreak of the Civil war James Griffith enlisted in a Texas regiment and fought for four years on the Confederate side. With the close of the war he returned to Grimes County and resumed his business as a farmer and stock raiser until his death at Bedias in that county in 1873. The oldest of his four children is John T., a farmer at Port Lavaca, Texas; William, the next, was a farmer and died at Wewoka, Oklahoma; the third in age is James F.; and Benjamin is a farmer in Grimes County.

Tho early life of the Hobart attorney was spent in Grimes County on a farm, with instruction from the district schools and in 1886 he completed a high school course. After that for one term he taught school at Willis in Montgomery County, Texas, for two years was in the same vocation in Grimes County and for the next two years was in Madison County as a teacher. In the meantime he had taken up and carried on as rapidly as possible the study of law and was admitted to the Texas bar in October, 1892. In the following November he was elected county attorney of Madison County, Texas, and the two years spent in that office was an experience of great value to him in his subsequent career. He was engaged in the practice of law at Madisonville from 1892 until February, 1897, and at that date removed to Greer County, Oklahoma, filing on a claim of 160 acres. He lived on his land eighteen months, proved his claim, and then sold out. His next location was Mangum, Oklahoma, where he practiced law from 1899 until 1903, in which year he moved to Hobart. In 1905 Mr. Griffith established a law office at Lone Wolf, Oklahoma, and was one of the leading lawyers in that locality until 1913, when he returned to Hobart. While at Lone Wolf he established the Kiowa County News and edited the paper three years.

Mr. Griffith was elected county attorney of Kiowa County in the fall of 1912, and was re-elected for another term of two years November 6, 1914. He now gives all his attention to the duties of his office, and is one of tho most esteemed members of the little community of officials at the courthouse in Hobart. While at Mangum he was elected the first city attorney and helped to incorporate that town. In politics he is a democrat, is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and affiliates with the Modern Woodmen of America at Lone Wolf.

In 1891, a year before his admission to the bar, he was married at Madisonville, Texas, to Miss Mary L. Ross, a daughter of Amos S. Ross, now a retired farmer at Granite, Oklahoma. Into their household have come nine children: Clyde is now in the lumber business at Bogalusa, Louisiana; Sarah Belle is a teacher in the Hobart schools and lives with her parents; Jonnie May is a junior in the Hobart High School, her brother Ross being a sophomore and her sister Ruth a freshman in the same school; Jeannette, Lucile and Amos Sherod, are all in the grammar schools; while the youngest is Joe Ben.