The father and son team of E.L. and C.L. Griffith founded Griffith Laboratories in 1919. Today, the company is a closely held family business led by third-generation Dean L. Griffith, his son Brian, and a senior management team. Over the years, the company has grown and prospered thanks to an enduring entrepreneurial spirit and strong family heritage.
Prior to the Civil War, the Griffiths were a prosperous family in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina. They owned several large businesses including brick and wagon factories. But the war reduced the family to poverty. They packed whatever they could onto two wagons and moved to Missouri to take up farming.
At nine years of age, Enoch Luther Griffith became the head of the family when his father died in a farming accident. When E.L. was 19, the family sold the farm for $2,900. They headed for Kansas and a homestead grant near Dodge City.
E.L. attended college in Dodge City and developed his entrepreneurial spirit and his business sensibilities. He also discovered that he was a natural salesman, a skill he took with him when he moved his family to Chicago in search of new business opportunities. This drive to find new opportunities, coupled with a quest for personal growth, led E.L. to plant a seed in Chicago that would grow into the Griffith Laboratories of today.