William F. Griffin (1838-1896) was born in Windsor, Maine, and died in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Western Union College and Military Academy in Fulton, Illinois, until the beginning of the American Civil War when he enlisted as a lieutenant in Company F of the 93rd Regiment of the Illinois Infantry. He was then promoted to captain of Companies H and I of the 49th Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry of the Union Army. He served in Mississippi until the end of the war and then remained in Greenville, Mississippi, to become a cotton farmer. After his cotton crop was ruined in a flood, he relocated to Bellows Falls, Vermont, and subsequently entered Harvard Law School. Upon graduating in 1868, he moved to Boston where he practiced law for the rest of his life. In 1872, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, he married Abbie W. Griffin (b. Spiller). They both studied Christian Science with Emily M. Meader, who was a student of Mary Baker Eddy's. Abbie went on to become a practitioner of Christian Science listed in The Christian Science Journal and a member of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. In the early 1890s Griffin did legal work on behalf of the Board of Directors of The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, and he was part of the group of Christian Scientists who traveled from Boston to attend the World's Parliament of Religions at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States.

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