The Student Everyone Forgot
Daniel Haraden Griffin was born in 1800 in Freeport, Maine. He grew up there, alongside classmate Elisha Bacon. He was 21 when he matriculated at Bowdoin, though he may have lived at home his first year of college. The spring of his sophomore year he boarded at R. Dunning’s. Griffin moved on campus in the fall of his junior year and lived in Winthrop Hall, next to Arthur Thompson, Patrick Henry Greenleaf, and Edward Deering Preble. Griffin was a member of the Peucinian Society. Griffin was a very disciplined student; his name never appeared among those were fined for disobedience. However, he was also not the most remarkable scholar. When asked about Griffin, years after his death, a certain “Dr. U” remarked that he was a “correct” young man, but could remember nothing else about him. Among his peers, however, Griffin had a number of friends. Griffin’s Bowdoin career came to an end in the fall of 1823, when he was a junior at the college. He died suddenly in the middle of that semester and was mourned by the other members of the Class of 1825.