Finding the Griffiths in Coffeyville The story of the Griffiths and Spears in Coffeyville, Kansas, is very interesting, I think. We found out that Harvey and Kate Spear lived with their daughter, Lurene, at 512 E. 8th Street; and William and Dell Griffith lived right next door at 510 E. 8th Street; and the newly weds, Clyde and Lurene lived right across the street at 511 E. 8th Street! Suzanne tells the story of how we came upon these homes which still stood in 2004 . . . The story is true... The names have not been changed... It happened last summer... Last July, my husband and I were on our annual family sojourn to see assorted living relatives scattered about the Midwest. During our drive from Minnesota south to Tulsa, Oklahoma, I noticed on the map that Coffeyville, Kansas was just a short distance out of our way. My husbands grandparents were from Coffeyville at one time and his grandmother had often talked of the shootout with the Dalton Gang which happened when she was a girl. We were curious to see what the little town looked like in 2004 and we wanted to see whether we could find any remnants of the early twentieth century. It was a Sunday afternoon, so all of the town would likely be closed, but we thought we would just drive around and look. Perhaps some of the town might have remained unchanged. Furthermore, I had recently researched the 1920 Federal Census for Coffeyville and found not only my husbands grandparents, Clyde and Lurene GRIFFITH, bur also their parents, William GRIFFITH, and Harvey SPEAR, living on the same block of the same street! Apparently, the young newly-weds had grown up next door to one another in this small mid-western town, and then rented a house across the street from their families. As we drove south into the Coffeyville city limits (a sign posted on the highway, informed us of this fact), we noticed that an older neighborhood of residential houses began within the next block. As frequently happens in small towns, one goes from farmland to residential neighborhoods very quickly and this was the case that day. We turned right at the first block and drove slowly down the tree lined street though a neighborhood of old, but adequately maintained frame houses. At the end of the block, we saw the street sign Eighth & Pine. Stop, I cried. for I remembered that the census address for the Griffith house was Eighth street. After my husband retrieved my notebook with copies of the census records, we were astonished to find that we had stopped exactly in front of the houses numbered 510, 511, and 512 East Eighth Street the identical houses which had been occupied almost a hundred years earlier by my husbands family! We quickly got out with a camera and began taking pictures first of the street sign and then each of the houses. When we attracted attention from one of the present day residents, my husband eagerly explained that his grandparents and great grandparents had lived in these very houses over eighty five years ago! The woman laughed saying she always knew these were sturdy houses and we were welcome to take as many pictures as we liked. We were unable on that day because of time constraints to learn more about Coffeyville, but we vowed to schedule another longer visit to Coffeyville during our next summer vacation. The next time we plan to take some other family members along and learn about the history of that interesting little town and perhaps visit the cemetery where some of our family members are buried.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 20:18:56 +0000
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