William Griffith (1766–1826)
In 1824 William Griffith and Bushrod Washington corresponded regarding the former's wish to replace Elias Boudinot Caldwell as clerk of the United States Supreme Court. Griffith's daughter Mary once referred to Bushrod Washington as "her father's best friend."
William Griffith, father of Mary Griffith Preto, was born in 1766 in Bound Brook, New Jersey. He studied law, gained admittance to the bar, and opened a practice in Burlington. In 1791 he married Abigail Hatfield, the niece of Congressman Elias Boudinot IV. Griffith achieved renown for publications such as Treatise on the Jurisdiction and Proceedings of Justices of the Peace in Civil Suits and his advocacy for revision of the New Jersey state constitution.
"William Griffith." Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2310012297/UHIC?u=viva_uva&sid=bookmark-UHIC&xid=157f1370. Accessed 14 Sept. 2023.
"Griffith, William (1766–1826)," in Rudolph J. Pasler and Margaret C. Pasler, The New Jersey Federalists (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1975), 210.
"Enclosure: Resolutions of a Meeting on Slavery in Trenton, New Jersey, 29 October 1819," Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-15-02-0152-0002. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 15, 1 September 1819 to 31 May 1820, ed. J. Jefferson Looney. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018, pp. 177–179.]
The New York Magazine; or, Literary Repository, Volume II (1791), 616.
William Griffith at Federal Judicial Center.
William Griffith Esq at FamilySearch.