This is the text on the center section of the Griffith tombstone . . . |
This is the text on the center section of the Griffith tombstone . . . |
* Griffith, Jacob Wark (1819-1885) -- also known as "Roaring Jake"; "Thundering Jake" -- Born in Jefferson County, Va. (now W.Va.), October 13, 1819. Served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War; member of Kentucky state legislature, 1854-55, 1878-79; colonel in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Father of famed early 20th century filmmaker D.W. Griffith. Died, of peritonitis, in Oldham County, Ky., March 31, 1885. Interment at Mt. Tabor Methodist Cemetery, Oldham County, Ky. Credits: "Political Graveyard"
D.W. Griffith: "I have not bothered about an ancestry; it is likely though that I was impressed in my childhood with certain family traditions which had come down through the mist of former generations; one was that ap Griffith, a Welch Prince of Wales, was the founder of one side of the house, and that a Lord Bravington who revolted with Monmouth and later emigrated under duress to Virginia, was a founder of the other side of the American Griffiths."
"I used to be told of a great-grandfather in Virginia, a stormy, fierce old man who refused to allow the word England to be spoken in his presence and who, as far as he could, barred his door to anything English." '"My grandfather was a Captain David Griffith, who fought in 1812."
"Lofty Green plantation, near
Crestwood, Kentucky, in the home of a former gold seeker and
Civil War cavalryman. Jacob Griffith had fought in Tennessee
under Joe Wheeler, winning favorable notice for capturing a
heavily-defended, ten-mile-long, train of over a thousand
mule-drawn wagons. When his wife Mary gave birth to a son, on
January 22, 1875, he was named David Wark (his father's middle
name) Griffith. After the war Jacob had settled down in a house
on the family plantation. The main house had inexplicably burned
to the ground a few weeks after the war's end. The 264-acre
plantation would never regain its pre-war luster. The
ex-cavalryman, wounded at least twice, would spend the remaining
twenty years of his life having children, drinking, gambling, and
playing the fiddle. And telling tales. He kept his regard for his
son well-hidden, but young David was present on many occasions,
hiding under the dining table, when his father held forth. War
experiences, readings from the romantic poets and the novelists
(such as Dickens), recitations from Shakespeare, all fell on one
extra pair of receptive ears. Father and son attended a magic
lantern show one night at a nearby schoolhouse. The younger
Griffith later recalled the occasion, remembering the farmers
standing outside, before the doors opened, the light of their
lanterns bouncing off the icicles festooning the eaves. In his
autobiography Griffith would write of sitting next to his father
and feeling, "the warmth of his great body...as much rapture
as a childish heart needed."
http://www.home.eznet.net/~dminor/TM990123.html
.“Roaring Jake,” was somewhat of a drifter. He came
to Kentucky from Maryland in 1840 at age 21. He apprenticed
himself to two medical practitioners and soon established his own
practice.
In 1846 he left Kentucky to fight in the Mexican War. Two years
later, he returned to wed Mary Oglesby. after two years of
marriage, he joined a wagon train headed for California and came
bak to Kentucky in 1852 to and re-established his "medical
practice". He was elected as a representative of Oldham and
Trimble counties by 1854.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Confederacy. It
is during this time that he received his nickname, “Roaring
Jake.” At the Battle of Corinth, Tenn., Roaring Jake was
unable to mount a horse due to a wound he had received a few
months earlier. Not defeated by this wound, leading a victorious
charge upon the enemy in a a horse and buggy he
commandeered ,
Jake was a gambler in war and peace, and he had a gambling habit,
enamoured by the possibility and thrill of winning large stakes.
His wife as the heir to a 264-acre farm in Kentucky. He mortaged
the farm, unbeknownst to his family or wife. After he died, in
the settling of his affairs and estate, the family soon learned
that he had taken out three mortgages on the farm, one of them as
payment to settle for a gambling debt. His personal property was
sold at auction in an attempt to settle his debts.
After Jacob’s death, the family moved to Southville in
southern Shelby County, Ky., to live with the older son, Will,
and his wife, Ann Crutchers. About 1890, the family had moved
again, to First Street in Louisville.
The son of "Roarng Jake" **The Life of David Wark Griffith
David Wark Griffith was born on January 22, 1875, near La Grange, Kentucky. Much of the Southern brand of romanticism and melodrama one finds in Griffith's work can be traced to his childhood. His father, Jacob Wark Griffith, was a farmer who had been a Confederate Civil War veteran, western adventurer, and a Kentucky legislator. The mythic image of his father influenced with no doubt Griffith's tastes in drama. His mother, a devout evangelical Methodist, shaped his moral values. His older sister, Mattie, was a school teacher, and she sparked Griffith's passion for literature, a result of their father's habit of reading classical literature to the family.
When Griffith was ten-years-old, his father passed away, leaving the family in financial poverty. They were eventually forced to move to a farm belonging to a relative in Shelby County. This was an unhappy time for Griffith, compounded by his dismal experiences at school. Griffith's family was not successful working their new farm either, and they were once more forced to move to Louisville where they tried, with little success, to run a boarding house. Griffith sold newspapers to help the family, and later dropped out of high school to work at a better job as a n elevator operator at a dry goods store. He then left this position to work at a bookstore, which exposed Griffith to a wider range of books and literature.
Around this time Griffith became interested in the theater. Determined to become a great playwright, he began a career in the theater, beginning with a twelve-year career as a stage actor in 1895. He made his first appearance under the pseudonym Lawrence Griffith. The following year he joined a touring stock company, making a very meager living as he traveled from town to town, acting in plays and begging for food. When he was no acting, Griffith wrote. His first produced play, A Fool and a Girl (1907), was financed by James K. Hackett. However, it was a commercial failure. This and his marriage to a young actress, Linda Arvidson, convinced Griffith to temporarily abandon his aspirations to become a great playwright in order to find more viable work; he found work in motion pictures. His initial motivation for working in motion pictures was simply out of need for money. He began as an actor and a scenarist for films in New York, playing the lead in the one-reel Edison Company film Rescued from an Eagle's Nest near the end of 1907. He then moved to the Biograph Company's studio in New York, continuing to act and write for several months when the chief director became ill. Griffith was hired as a replacement, and he directed his first film in 1908, The Adventures of Dollie.
* Credits to Political Graveyard
** Credits for this information: http://www.silentsaregolden.com/articles/griffithgrave.html used here for educational and informational purposes only-
