Easy Painted Foggy Sky Our Roots Run Deep
"When I was in high school, I was not athletic," Griffith said in a 2005 interview. "We didn't have money, and I was not a good student but when music came into my life. … I became somebody." As a child he listened to the Lone Ranger on the radio, imagining the stories told. "When I discovered I could entertain, I worked hard at it," he said in a 1983 interview. "It's the only thing I do well. There's no point in doing what you don't enjoy. … Whenever I act or entertain, I try to say some small truth. No preaching, just to have some small thing to say that is true." Andy is shown here about 1943. -
Charity Childress (1834-1910) and William Griffith (1833-1895), Andy Griffith's father's grandparents, were the generation to bring the family off the farm. Bill was a blacksmith in Mount Airy, leaving behind the land the family had farmed since Benjamin Griffith's land grant in 1786 south of town near Stewarts Creek. -
Henry Clayton Taylor (1842-1900) and Rebecca Ann Simmons (1848-1923), Andy's great-grandparents, were Quakers, and lived in the Westfield community of Surry County from the early 1800s. They are buried in the White Plains Friends Cemetery. -
Andy graduated from high school in Mount Airy in 1944 and headed to UNC-Chapel Hill intent on becoming a Moravian minister. Whenever he was home from school he sang in services at Grace Moravian but acting became his true love. He didn't stay with the Moravian church but he held onto many of the denomination's beliefs such as pacifism. "On my show, if there's a squabble, we stop it. … I don't care who you are, you're going to have frustration. I can be violent … but I don't hurt people." The Andy Griffith Playhouse is all that remains of Rockford Street School, where Andy attended grade school, shown here in 1929. - -
Our History is a regular column submitted by Kate Rauhauser-Smith, visitor services manager at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History, examining the region's history and some related displays at the museum.
"One time, a long time ago, this country was a part of England and we wasn't gettin' along with them too good. Fact, we was thinking about breakin' away and startin' our own country," Sheriff Andy Taylor explained to a group of spellbound boys at the courthouse. "But the king over there in England, he says, 'If you do that I'm gonna send my Red Coats.' They was British soldiers and he was a gonna send 'em over here to whoop us!"
"Of all the nerve," exclaimed an indignant Deputy Barney Fife.
"Yeah, and he says, 'You better think about that thing'," Taylor continued. "Well, so your great, great, great, great, great, great, great-granddaddies all got together, you know, to think about it and they argued back and forth about it for a while and finally one of 'em says, 'Let's do it! Let's start our own country. … Git your gun we gonna have us a Revolution!"
So it was that America's favorite dad ignited a love of history in Opie and his friends on the 1963 episode of the "Andy Griffith Show" called "Andy Discovers America." It was also the episode in which Sheriff Andy meets schoolteacher Helen Crump, the woman he would eventually marry.
Griffith's character frequently found folksy and entertaining ways to teach lessons, big and small, to the characters on the show and to those of us who were watching. He still has lessons he can teach us if we take the time to look.
Andy Samuel Griffith was born in June 1926 in Mount Airy to Carl and Geneva "Nannie" (Nunn) Griffith. I don't think there's anyone in this town, especially in the last week who doesn't know that.
Many know he attended the Rockford Street School, graduated from the Mount Airy High School and attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They might even know that he rode his bike across town to Grace Moravian Church where Rev. Mickey taught him to read music, play the tuba and other brass instruments, and to sing.
But there is so much more to the story of America's favorite sheriff. His family roots spread wide and hold deep in the hollows and up the mountain ridges to Patrick County in Virginia and down to Stokes County here in North Carolina, where his ancestors have lived since the 1700s.
John Griffith, Andy's 4x great-grandfather, was settled in today's Surry County at least by 1772 when he appeared on Martin Armstrong's tax list.
Armstrong was a surveyor hired to oversee the division of Rowan County to form Surry County in 1770, a process that took nearly two years to be formalized. A shrewd land speculator, he laid out the towns on land he owned and then served as justice of the peace, sheriff, tax collector, and colonel of the Surry County Militia.
John Griffith served as ensign of the first company of the militia through the colonists' war against the Cherokee and into the beginning of the Revolutionary War though he died before the Surry Militia deployed to Kings Mountain, Cowpens, or Guilford Courthouse.
John Newman, however, Andy's 4x great-grandfather on his mother's mother's family, served in the Virginia militia throughout the Revolution and claimed bounty land in Patrick County as payment at the war's end.
It was this family with others allied through marriage such as the Nunns, Phillips, and Cassels, who shopped at the big white building near the Parkway called Mayberry Trading Post.
Digging into the genealogy of the town's famous son personalizes many stories of the South. Some lines (Childress, Vest, and Alford) seem to have come from early Virginia settlements along the James River and Chesapeake Bay, perhaps French Huguenots. Some seem to have been "long hunters" and other early settlers who traveled down the wide Shenandoah Valley and cut through the Appalachians into the Kentucky territories.
His family tree is filled with English, Scots, Germans and, if folklore is to be believed, Native Americans. More research will bring to light more stories about this man who spent his life telling stories to make people laugh.
"When I was in high school, I was not athletic," Griffith said in a 2005 interview. "We didn't have money, and I was not a good student but when music came into my life. … I became somebody." As a child he listened to the Lone Ranger on the radio, imagining the stories told. "When I discovered I could entertain, I worked hard at it," he said in a 1983 interview. "It's the only thing I do well. There's no point in doing what you don't enjoy. … Whenever I act or entertain, I try to say some small truth. No preaching, just to have some small thing to say that is true." Andy is shown here about 1943.
Charity Childress (1834-1910) and William Griffith (1833-1895), Andy Griffith's father's grandparents, were the generation to bring the family off the farm. Bill was a blacksmith in Mount Airy, leaving behind the land the family had farmed since Benjamin Griffith's land grant in 1786 south of town near Stewarts Creek.
Henry Clayton Taylor (1842-1900) and Rebecca Ann Simmons (1848-1923), Andy's great-grandparents, were Quakers, and lived in the Westfield community of Surry County from the early 1800s. They are buried in the White Plains Friends Cemetery.
Andy graduated from high school in Mount Airy in 1944 and headed to UNC-Chapel Hill intent on becoming a Moravian minister. Whenever he was home from school he sang in services at Grace Moravian but acting became his true love. He didn't stay with the Moravian church but he held onto many of the denomination's beliefs such as pacifism. "On my show, if there's a squabble, we stop it. … I don't care who you are, you're going to have frustration. I can be violent … but I don't hurt people." The Andy Griffith Playhouse is all that remains of Rockford Street School, where Andy attended grade school, shown here in 1929.
Kate Rauhauser-Smith is the visitor services manager for the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History with 22 years in journalism before joining the museum staff. She and her family moved to Mount Airy in 2005 from Pennsylvania where she was also involved with museums and history tours. She can be reached at KRSmith@NorthCarolinaMuseum.org or by calling 336-786-4478 x228
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com/opinion/78169/griffith-roots-run-deep
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