Memorial Record of Western Kentucky, Volume I and Volume II, Lewis
Publishing Company, 1904, pp. 15-16.  Caldwell Co.

JOSEPH ESTLE GRIFFIN

     The subject of this sketch is entitled to be called the pioneer
photographer of western Kentucky, he having spent no less than forty
years in business here.  His present location is at Princeton, where
he has been since 1884.
     Joseph Estle Griffin was born in Lincoln county, Tennessee,
September 4, 1843, third son in the family of ten children of Joseph
and Rebecca (Jewell) Griffin, the former a native of South Carolina
and the latter of North Carolina.  Joseph Griffin settled in Tennessee
when a young man, and in that state spent the rest of his life as a
stock dealer, carrying on the business at different places.  He died
at the age of fifty-four years.  His widow lived to be seventy years
of age.
     At the early age of thirteen years J.E. Griffin started out to
make his own way in the world, and began by learning the boot and shoe
trade, at which he worked until he was twenty.  The shoe business,
however, was not just to his liking, and he turned his attention to
photography.  He learned the business at Roaring Springs, Kentucky,
where he had located in 1862, and he afterward worked at his trade in
Madisonville, Hopkinsville, Cadiz, Mayfield and other places in
Kentucky, and in 1884 located in Princeton, where he has since
remained and where he has established a good business, under the firm
name of Griffin & Watkins.
     Mr. Griffin married, in 1897, Miss Lucy Watkins, his partner, who
has since been his partner in two senses of the word.  The firm name
continues the same.  Mrs. Griffin is an artist of much talent, and
that department of the work which pertains to enlarging and painting
is entirely in her charge.  There is perhaps no business which has
made greater strides along the lines of advancement than that of
photography.  Mr. Griffin has kept pace with the advancement made.  In
1903 he erected a handsome and modern building in Princeton, and now
the firm occupies one of the best equipped photographic galleries in
Kentucky.

Griffin Jewell Watkins
=
Lincoln-TN SC NC Trigg-KY Hopkins-KY Graves-KY

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/caldwell/griffin.je.txt