Located in the NE portion of the Eugene Masonic Cemetery is a citizen memorial comprised of a stone monument with a bronze plaque in front that reads:
WILEY GRIFFON
1867 - 6/26/1913ONCE DESCRIBED AS "EUGENE'S PIONEER COLORED CITIZEN", AND "ONE OF THE MOST INDUSTRIOUS COLORED MEN IN EUGENE", WILEY GRIFFON WAS WELL KNOWN ON THE STREETS OF EUGENE. A TRAM OPERATOR, HE DROVE THE CITY'S "HORSE" DRAWN TROLLEYS. THESE TROLLEYS RECEDED WHAT EVENTUALLY BECAME LANE TRANSIT DISTRICT TODAY. THE FARE WAS 5 CENTS AND CHILDREN WERE DESCRIBED AS SAVING THEIR PENNIES TO RIDE WITH MR. GRIFFON WHO WOULD GIVE THEM HARD CANDY, STORIES, AND SOMETIMES A FREE RIDE HOME. HIS CARRIAGE CARRIED MANY EUGENE CITIZENS TO THEIR FINAL REST HERE IN THIS CEMETERY.
MR. GRIFFON WAS NEITHER THE FIRST OR ONLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN IN EUGENE. HE WAS THE FIRST ONE MENTIONED BY NAME AS BEING A RESIDENT. DESPITE EXCLUSION LAWS IN EFFECT AT THE TIME FORBIDDING THE PRESENCE OF OF NON-WHITE AMERICAN CITIZENS IN OREGON AND EUGENE, MR. GRIFFON AND OTHERS CAME TO LIVE HERE.
MR. GRIFFON OWNED A HOME OVERLOOKING THE MILLRACE ON THE SITE OF WHAT IS NOW EWEB'S EMPLOYEE PARKING LOT. HE WAS EMPLOYED VARIOUSLY, AS A JANITOR FOR THE UNIVERSITY DORMITORY, A WAITER ON RAILROAD DINING CARS, AND A PORTER AT THE ELKS CLUB WHEN HE DIED. IN ONE OBITUARY HE WAS FONDLY REMEMBERED FOR HAVING A READY SMILE, A KIND WORD, BEING A DEVOUT AND DEVOTED CHRISTIAN, AND A MAN WHO WAS NOT KNOWN TO DRINK, OR USE PROFANITY. ANOTHER OBITUARY INDICATES SOME OF WHAT HE MUST HAVE ENDURED TO LIVE AND MAKE A HOME HERE. IT IS TO THAT SPIRIT OF ENDURANCE THIS HISTORICAL MONUMENT IS DEDICATED.
THIS HISTORICAL MONUMENT MADE POSSIBLE BY:
LANE COMMUNITY COLLEGE BLACK STUDENT UNION, ERIK & ANN MULLER, EUGENE
WATER AND ELECTRIC BOARD (EWEB), LANE ESD TEACHING AMERICAN HISTORY, THE
EUGENE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION, LANE COUNTY HUMAN RIGHTS AND
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ADVISORY COMMITTEE, ADRIAN & KHALIYAH RODRIGUEZ, CHERI
TURPIN & MARK HARRIS: I, TOO AM EUGENE: A MULTICULTURAL HISTORY PROJECT.
I read that the location of Wiley Griffon's grave was lost many decades ago in this cemetery. This monument has been placed here to remember his legacy for visitors to enjoy.
I was able to locate a couple of PDF documents from websites highlighting Griffon's life. One document reads:
Wiley Griffon (1867-1913) was a black man in a white town. He came to Eugene around 1890, and was the driver of the town’s first streetcar service — a single mule-powered car that ran on narrow-gauge tracks from the Southern Pacific railway station to the university. “In fact, he was driver, conductor, dispatcher, and largely the motive power by persistently shoving along the ambling mule,” said the Eugene Morning Register. The streetcar line’s first owner sold out after two years, and the new owner was absent from Eugene for months at a time — leaving Griffon completely in charge of operations. After the line shutdown, Griffon took on various jobs. “He was for a time janitor at the University dormitory, was employed by Grandma Munro at her famous eating house on the O.R. & N. line at Meacham, was later waiter on a dining car on the railroad, and afterward worked at many odd jobs in Eugene and at other points in the valley,” said the Eugene Daily Guard. “For sometime previous to his death he was porter at the Elks’ club. The Elks gave him a decent burial.”
Another document From the Water and Electrical Board website the reads:
Wiley Griffon’s House
Wiley Griffon is widely considered to be Eugene’s first African-American resident. Well- known and popular, Griffon was the driver and de facto operator of a mule-driven streetcar service that carried early residents from West Eugene to the University of Oregon campus. A Sanborn map from 1912 shows Griffon’s house to be located near the intersection of 4th and Mill Street, on the riverfront property near to the present-day EWEB Employee’s Credit Union. On Eugene Skinner’s first plat, Griffon’s residence is located on Block 10, Lot 4.
Born in 1867, Griffon came to Eugene from Texas in 1891 with Henry W. Holden, the railway entrepreneur who employed him. Wiley died in Eugene in 1913, at age 46, and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery among Eugene’s other pioneer citizens. The location of his grave in the Masonic, and the fact that the local Elks paid for his funeral, says a great deal about the respect Griffon earned during his 22 years as a member of Eugene’s community. By all accounts, he was a well-liked, respected man who made recognized contributions to the daily lives of others. He worked for many businesses during
his time in Eugene, and purchased his small home overlooking the Millrace in 1909. It is a simple story of a popular man made remarkable by that fact that Griffon lived in Eugene at a time when Oregon laws still barred African-Americans from residing in the state.
At the time Griffon lived on the EWEB property, Oregon could hardly have been a welcoming place for African-Americans. In 1844, the Territory government had banned slavery but made it illegal for African-Americans to live within its bounds. Oregon reaffirmed its exclusion laws when the state constitution was ratified in 1857. In 1859, Oregon was the only state in the union that still had exclusionary laws on its books. These laws weren’t repealed until 1926, and it wasn’t until 1959 that Oregon ratified the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, almost 90 years after it was approved by the Federal Government.
As the first recorded of many African-American pioneers in Eugene, and as the city’s first known public-transit provider, Wiley Griffon’s is an important story to share through the design of this interpretive landscape. Griffon’s house also operates as a connecting point between two adjacent sites of historic significance to the African-American community: the Mims House and Ferry Street Community site.
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