When his parents died in Warren, Illinois, where he was born in 1872, 
  Samuel Griffin and his sister, Elaine (later Mrs. Leonard Ott) came to
  Barber County to live with their aunt Sarah Anderson and be near their
  cousins Al and Will Wheat.
     Blanche Ellen Young was born in Ottumwa, Iowa. She graduated from
  high school in Medicine Lodge in 1898, then attended Mount Carmel Academy
  in Wichita, where she studied music. Her father owned the J.R. Young drug
  store on Main Street, later to be known for many years as Hibbard's Rexall,
  George Hibbard being the husband of her sister Inis Gibbs.
     Her mother was a no-nonsense woman who urged Blanche to marry recent
  law school graduate Samuel Griffin, who she felt was likely to become a
  successful member of the community 0 a prediction that was soon to prove
  accurate when, following their marriage, he was elected representative
  from Barber County in the state legislature in Topeka. They built a home
  at 603 North Main Street, where they lived the rest of their lives.
     Their home was shared with others. For years they were seldom without
  roomers, most of whom took meals with them and became part of the family.
  Among them were schoolteachers Evadine Richards, Winifred Cornick (Thompson),
  Faye Simmon (an invaluable influence when son George arrived), Carolyn
  Mattingly, Majorie Bowman (Fullerton), Clyde Ernst, niece - Helen Wheat 
  (Gordon) while attending high school; Best Brothers executives - Frank
  Kochin and Frank Marsh; geologist Nelson Ruth, who early predicted there
  would eventually be much oil and gas activitiy in Barber County.
     In those years before radio and television, evenings were spent around
  the piano sining favorite songs, dressing up in outlandish costumes, and
  taking pictures with a camera that could be set so the photographer had 
  time to join the group being captured for posterity.
     St. Mark's Church (Episcopal) was important beyond being the place where
  they worshiped. For many years Blanche played the organ for services and, as 
  a member of the Guild, helped clean the church, keep a watchful eye on those
  in need of help in the community, and entertained the minister, who came
  from Anthony every other Sunday to hold service. Sam was responsible for
  the operation of the church's furnace and collected the offering at the end
  of the service. And later son George was an acolyte, assisting the minister
  during communion.
     Blanche was so active in club work that suppers sometimes suffered until
  the invention of an electric fireless cooker that make it possible for the
  meal to be prepared while she was busy elsewhere. She was a member of the
  Eastern Star, the Community Club, a charter member of the PEO. She 
  particularly enjoyed the Monday Afternoon Club, for which she prepared 
  papers, helped with the yearbooks, performed in such plays as Barrie's
  "Twelve Pound Look", and played duets with Alice Rudolph (Rankin). She
  accompanied Mrs. Jan Skinner in a musical reading of "Hiawatha" that took
  weeks of preparation. There were trips to Wichita and Kansas City to hear
  opera singer Galli Curci and Kansas-born Marian Talley. She played for
  entertainments at the high school and the opera house such as Gilbert and
  Sullivan's "The Mikado", which featured Grace Yewell, who had a lovely
  voice, as did her daughter Arrena, who became one of Roy Campbell's
  Royalists, a group at Friend's University in Wichita that later was 
  successful on the radio in New York City.
     Blance helped supplement the family income by building two houses
  nearby that were rented to Rose Withers, the John Mullikin family, the
  Frank Sticklers, the Dr. C.V. Moore family, the Fred Smiths, and the Sam
  Richard family.
     Sam owned a farm at the crest of the hill east of town where the Joe
  Fussell family thrived in spite of the poor land and a cyclone that
  literally spread the family over several miles of the country.
     Sam was a member of the Masonic Lodge and a charter member of the 
  Lions Club, where he once inadvertently caused a sensation by arranging
  for members to be entertained by several young ladies from a visiting
  tent show who, instead of singing as he expected, got up on the tables
  in the basement of the Presbyterian Church and performed a sexy dance in
  scanty clothes that were hardly Presbyterian.
     Vacations were spent visiting Sam's sisters - Grace Noyes in Dubuque,
  Iowa, and Mayme Dawes in California or touring the national parks in 
  Colorado and Wyoming with relatives Frances and Chester Ewing, Inis and
  George Hibbard, Dr. G.R. and Mary McCreery, and Wright and Lee Dillman.
     Beginning in 1927 the Indian Peace Treaty Pageant was regularly the
  focus of family activity. Blanche played the portable organ for the
  singing in the settler's scene in which Sam portrayed a tinhorn gambler.
  He was also vice-president of the asociation, in charge of the sale of 
  tickets. George assisted director Franklin Gilson during the 1937 pageant.
     Neighbors were always important, particularly the Dr. L.L. Osborn
  family and his remarkable mother Jennie, as well as the McCunes next door
  in whose cave the family spent many an hour when cyclones threatened at 
  the end of a hot summer day. When Blance died in 1935, Mrs. Maude Jarnagin
  helped by taking care of the house. Mayor Harve Haynes provided company
  by taking a room. Thelma Dye and Margaret Hart at Dye's Cafe and Hart's
  Hotel added pleasure to their food by sitting down and visiting with Sam
  at mealtime.
     Education was always extremely important to the family, particularly
  during the years son George was growing up. Even when money was hard to 
  come by, there was no stinting for worthwhile projects such as piano
  lessons for George in Wichita or Winfield or attending college at Wichita
  University, Washburn, and Northwestern Universities.
     When Samuel Griffin died in 1949 he was not wealthy, but he had shared
  with his family a life rich in the opportunities and accomplishments that
  were possible during his lifetime in Barber County.
  
                 
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 206 
     Submitted by: George D. Griffin