Background
Benjamin was born on October 16, 1688 in the County of Cardigan, South Wales, and had two half-brothers, Enoch and Abel Morgan, the former of whom came to America in 1702 and the latter in 1712.
Benjamin was born on October 16, 1688 in the County of Cardigan, South Wales, and had two half-brothers, Enoch and Abel Morgan, the former of whom came to America in 1702 and the latter in 1712.
Griffith arrived in 1710, and the next year united with the Welsh Tract Baptist Church, Delaware.
In 1720 he moved to what is now Pennsylvania, where he henceforth made his home, living, after 1722, on a farm of 300 acres in the Neshaminy Valley.
They joined the Montgomery church, of which Griffith became pastor in 1722, although he was not ordained until October 23, 1725. Here he served until his death. While he had no special oratorical gifts, he was sought as a counselor in matters ecclesiastical, legal, and medical, and he was evidently of great influence in the Philadelphia Baptist Association.
In 1743 he published A Short Treatise of Church-Discipline, printed by Franklin, which was much used by Baptist ministers and churches; and in 1747, An Answer to a Pamphlet Entitled “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism, ” probably the work for the printing of which the Philadelphia Association had voted in 1746 “to make a subscription. ”
This Association had kept no formal records, but in 1746 it designated Griffith to “collect and set in order the accounts of the several Baptist churches in these provinces, and keep a record of the proceedings of our denomination in these provinces” and it was further “agreed” that he “should have satisfaction for his trouble”.
Griffith entered his information concerning the churches and the early affairs of the Association in a carefully written folio volume, at present deposited in the library of the American Baptist Historical Society, now one of the most important source books of early American Baptist history.
Morgan Edwards, who continued this “Association Book, ” beginning in 1761, was undoubtedly stimulated in, if not to, his important historical work by this earlier enterprise. Griffith died about twelve days before his eightieth birthday, although the epitaph on his tombstone reads, “aged 80 years. ”
On December 7, 1720, he married Sarah Miles of Radnor, who survived until November 22, 1752.
