GRIFFIN, TEXAS. Griffin is off State Highway 110 seventeen miles northeast of Rusk in northeastern Cherokee County. The town was established by Isaac Kendrick in 1853 on the old Tyler to Rusk road. A post office operated at the community from 1853 to 1855 under the name Troutman, but it was renamed Griffin in 1855 for Kendrick's hometown of Griffin, Georgia. Around the time of the Civil Warqv the community had a two-story hotel, a Masonic lodge, and a general store. The post office, which was suspended between 1868 and 1876, continued to operate until 1906. A school was in operation in Griffin by 1897, when it had an enrollment of forty-six. In the mid-1930s Griffin had a school, two churches, several stores, and a population of fifty. With World War IIqv the town began a steady decline, and by the early 1990s only one church, a cemetery, and a few scattered dwellings remained in the area. The community reported a population of twenty-one in 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cherokee County History (Jacksonville, Texas: Cherokee County Historical Commission, 1986). Hattie Joplin Roach, A History of Cherokee County (Dallas: Southwest, 1934).
Christopher Long
