Griffith, – Ever Widening Circle

Some ancestors hide in plain sight, behind nothing more than the sound of their own name.

Dorman J. Cortright was born on Monday, October 31, 1825 — Halloween day — in Butler, Wayne County, New York, a son of Lt. Simeon Emerson Cortright and Margaret Haines. Sit with that a moment. Two hundred years ago this month, in a farming town in upstate New York, a Halloween baby opened his eyes — and nobody in that house could have guessed that his great-great-great-granddaughter would one day come looking for him in October, and find him by the sound of his name.

Because the name would not sit still. In the records he is Cortright, and he is Courtright. In other papers the clerks wrote it the way their ears heard it, and our family grew up saying it — “Cartright.” I grew up hearing it sounded out just that way. He was the same man every time: a farmer, a husband, a father. The spelling changed with whoever held the pen. That is how an ancestor gets lost — not because he left no trace, but because his trace is filed under three different names.

Tintype portrait of Dorman J Cortright and his wife Elizabeth, from the family files of Coni Dubois

On Tuesday, October 23, 1849, Dorman married Elizabeth Egbert — “Eliza” — a daughter of John L. Egbert and Lydia Crandall, born May 12, 1829, in Tompkins, Delaware County, New York. The newlyweds began their life under her father’s roof: the 1850 census finds them in Veteran, Chemung County, New York, in John L. Egbert’s household, Dorman listed at 24, a married son-in-law, Eliza beside him at 22.

Then the family did what so many New York families did — they went west. By the fall of 1860 the census taker found them in Clarence, Calhoun County, Michigan: Dorman — written down as Courtright — 35 years old and farming, Eliza keeping house, and their little girl Emma five years old, with baby Doy just arrived. There had been a first son, Ferdinand, born in Clarence on March 18, 1851 — and lost on July 10, 1853, “a lil over 2 yrs old,” as the family’s own note says. Some griefs this family carried quietly for a very long time.

Eliza did not get to grow old. She died in Clarence on October 16, 1864, at only 35, and was laid to rest in Clarence Center Cemetery — Section B, Row 5. Dorman married again, to Elizabeth Bennett of Erie (born April 2, 1833), and they had a daughter, Ella, born in 1868. In the 1870 census Dorman is still in Clarence, 44 years old, working by then as a house carpenter, with Emma, 15, at school.

His own time ran out on June 6, 1872. The record gives his age plainly: 46 — and the cause: TB. He was buried in Clarence Center Cemetery, Plot B05.10 — back in Section B, in the same ground as Eliza. That fall, on October 29, 1872, his estate went through the Calhoun County probate court — Case No. 2184, a sixteen-page packet of petitions and administration papers, the whole paperwork of a life being settled by the people he left behind.

But here is where Dorman stops being just a name I found, and becomes mine.

His daughter Emma Estelle Cortright — born Friday, June 8, 1855, in Chemung, New York — grew up and married D Elton Mathye Griffith on Friday, July 4, 1873, in Lansing, Michigan, he 23 and she 18. (The marriage record spells her Courtright one more time, for good measure.) Emma lived to 84, dying in Rochester, Michigan, on October 22, 1939 — and her Michigan death certificate, filled out in a new century, names her parents one final time: father, Dorman Courtright; mother, Eliza Egbert. Among Emma and Elton’s ten children was a son named Ernest Emmit Griffith — the young father some of you met here as our Ancestor of the Day on September 26, lost in the dynamite explosion of 1915. Ernest’s daughter Marion was my grandmother. Her son Rex was my dad.

So the Halloween baby of 1825 is my great-great-great-grandfather — and the line from his New York cradle to a porch in Louisiana runs straight and documented, census by census, record by record.

This week, two hundred years after he was born on Halloween, we light his candle first.

Welcome home, Grandpa Dorman. We found you — under every name they ever wrote you down with. 🕯️

— Coni Dubois

The records behind this story

Every claim above rests on one of these, from my own research files.

1850 United States Federal Census — Veteran, Chemung County, New York (Sept 30, 1850); Dorman Cortright, 24, in the household of his father-in-law John L. Egbert. NARA M432_486, p. 120.
1860 United States Federal Census — Clarence, Calhoun County, Michigan (Sept 11, 1860); “Dorman Courtright,” 35, farmer; Eliza; Emma, 5; Doy, 1. NARA M653_539.
1870 United States Federal Census — Clarence, Calhoun County, Michigan (July 13, 1870); Dorman J. Courtright, 44, house carpenter; Emma, 15, at school. Roll 666, p. 519.
Michigan, Wills and Probate Records, 1784–1980 — Dorman J. Cortright, probate Oct 29, 1872, Calhoun County; Case No. 2184; Probate Packets 2153–2201 (16 images: petitions, orders, administration papers). Michigan Probate Court (Calhoun County).
Michigan, Marriage Records, 1867–1952 — Dorman’s second marriage (Elizabeth Bennett); and daughter Emma’s marriage to D. Elton Griffiths, July 4, 1873, Lansing, Ingham County, Record No. 2168; witnesses Ida M. Griffith & Charles M. Braduer; performed by J. W. Robinson.
Michigan Death Certificates, 1921–1952 — Emma Estelle Griffith, d. Oct 22, 1939, Rochester, Oakland County; parents named: Dorman Courtright & Eliza Egbert. GS Film 001973061, Image 00262.
Michigan, Death Records, 1867–1950 / Deaths and Burials Index, 1867–1995 — family records incl. Emma Estelle Griffith.
Find A Grave — Dorman J. Cortright #11133561 (Clarence Center Cemetery, Plot B05.10); Elizabeth “Eliza” Egbert Cortright #20160553 (Section B, Row 5); Emma Estelle Cortright Griffith #61105532 (Mount Avon Cemetery, Rochester, Addition 3, Plot 644, Space 8).
County histories on the Internet Archive — Peirce, History of Calhoun County, Michigan (L. H. Everts & Co.); Biographical Review of Calhoun County, Michigan (Hobart & Mather / Benson).
U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860–1918 — Cortright, Clarence, Calhoun County (1894).
From my own notes (Dec 10, 2010): I called the Rochester clerk’s office and spoke with Toni — five Griffiths rest at Mount Avon; Emma lies in Addition 3, Plot 644, Space 8, and her son Dill in Space 4.

A note on the name: the surname appears across the records as Cortright, Courtright, and in family speech as “Cartright.” These are the same family — clerks writing what they heard. This post uses the spelling carried in my family file: Cortright.

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