Biography

As a child Griffith Rutherford boarded a ship in Ireland with his parents bound for America, he but got off without them. They died en route. Raised by relatives in Pennsylvania, at 19 he moved from New Jersey to Halifax County. It’s unclear what he was doing for money before his early 30s, when he was named surveyor of then-larger Rowan County. A family genealogy says he bought 960 acres on the South Fork of Grant’s Creek, seven miles southwest of Salisbury, in 1753. The next year he married Elizabeth Graham, who had 10 children with him. Along with farming, he had a grain mill, in addition to dealing and investing in land. Rutherford held eight people in slavery as of 1790. He was said to be 5‘-8