John Strother Griffin

John Strother Griffin (1816–1898) was a surgeon attached to the General Stephen W. Kearney expedition from New Mexico to California, a landowner and founder of East Los Angeles and a member of the Common Council of the city of Los Angeles, where he was one of the first university-trained physicians to settle.

John Strother Griffin was born in Fincastle, Virginia, on June 25, 1816, to John Caswell Griffin and Mary Talbot Hancock, both of Virginia. He had five siblings, George Hancock, William Preston, Julia Elizabeth, Caroline Margaret and Elizabeth Croghan. An uncle was William Clark (explorer) of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and a later brother-in-law was Confederate General Albert Sydney Johnston.

His father dying when young John was seven and his mother when he was nine, Griffin was then brought up and given a "classical education" in Louisville, Kentucky, by a maternal uncle, George Hancock.

He was married about 1856 to Louisa M.E. Hayes or Hays of Baltimore, who died in 1888, ten years before Griffin's death on August 23, 1898. Griffin succumbed in his East Los Angeles home, 1109 Downey Ave., where he lived with his nephew and niece, Mr. and Mrs. Hancock M. Johnson, and their children. Funeral services were conducted in the home and at the gravesite in Evergreen Cemetery by J.P. Widney. Pallbearers were J.M. Griffith, Harris Newmark, S. Lazard, Reginaldo Del Valle, Major Ben Truman and James Craig. Besides the Johnsons, he was survived by two nieces, Mrs. George J. Denis and Mrs. William B. Pritchard.

Griffin attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a medical degree in 1837. At that time the university listed his "place of origin" as "Kentucky."

...
Wikipedia