David and Minerva Griffin's children

Many men in both the North and the South were quick to volunteer for service for their respective countries. At the onset of the war the general feeling among the soldiers on both side was that after a sharp clash the conflict would not last long. As the war drug on the enthusiasm for the war began to wane. Without enough volunteers to fill its ranks both side instituted a military draft. The longer the war stretched on the less popular the draft became. Cities and states were forces to offer sign up bonuses, and reenlistment bonuses in order to fill out the ranks. On average most men left the Army when their usually two year enlistment was up. Such was not the case for David Brainard Griffin. He joined out of a true sense of patriotism. He was eligible to leave the Army after two years. But as he so vividly expresses in the letters he wrote to his family he was determined to stay in the Army until the Union was restored. That decision was to result in his death at the battle of Chickamauga. Knowing that he was going to be a long time away from home in his letters he requested that his wife Minerva have a “likeness” taken of her and the children so that he had something to remind him of his family back home. The photo’s displayed here are in all likelihood copies that his wife kept that have been handed down through his generations. One is of the two girls, Alice Jane and Ida May, the second is Minerva and her son Edgar Lincoln. They come to us courtesy of his granddaughter Lynette Wescovich via the good offices of Nick Adams.