and motion sensors would go off with nobody in the room. Perhaps the most intriguing
happening, on one clear day Griffith was photographing the outside of the house for his records. When reviewing the film, he noticed the distinct image of a tall man looking out one of the ground floor windows. There was not a living soul inside the house at the time.
The incidents, which Griffith
describes as “overwhelming” at first, piqued his interest into the grand home’s history. Recalling his first visit from Richard
Thomas, a local businessman, farmer and politician, Griffith was amazed when Thomas told him that the house he had bought was known as the Lemoine- Griffith house. It was a quirk of fate, and
although Griffith had no relation to the original owners of the house, he had a good place to start his research. Enlisting a friend from Heathsville to
help with research and genealogy, Griffith found that the house not only had strong ties to many prominent local families, but also that one of its early residents, Emma Lemoine, is the namesake behind the town of Emmerton, of which the house is a focal gem. The site where the current home sits
was once part of a much larger tract, totaling 80 acres. The first site included a general store and post office where the current Jerusalem Baptist Church stands, as well as a smaller, two-story house with just a pair of rooms on each floor. Early records show that The Reverend
Thomas Corbin Braxton first came to the property in 1832 after a rift in the congregation at Farnham Church, where he was a pastor. Braxton, whose grandfather was Carter Braxton, one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence, shepherded 143 parishioners to the site and a new church was erected. The congregation grew so quickly that by 1840 they had to build a larger facility down the road. By 1868, the general store had become a staple to the community and John Staige Braxton, the Reverend’s son, purchased the entire property. In 1876, Braxton’s daughter, Maria,
married Oscar M. Lemoine, a returned Confederate soldier, businessman, boarder at the family home, and the son of a prominent local merchant. Oscar’s unmarried younger sister Emma, of Emmerton fame, lived with the family at the home and would remain there for her entire life, even after Oscar’s sudden death at age 56 in 1897. In 1887, the house was significantly
expanded to include spacious, high- ceilinged new sitting rooms, bedrooms and reception areas. In 1899, Lemoine’s daughter, Olivia Staige, started a new era in the house after marrying Benjamin Griffith, who (along with his brother) had recently taken over the general store. In addition to Griffith’s Store, the brothers ran a local tomato cannery, as well as a Plymouth, Chevrolet and DeSoto car dealership. Griffith and Lemoine had two
daughters. The eldest, Katherine, married William Tayloe Murphy, Sr., in 1923.
60 July/August 2017
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