Ruth O. Young was born in 1891 to William F. Young, a carpenter, and his wife, Sina Victoria Collins Young. Ruth was the oldest of their three children. She was born in Virginia, according to census information. This may have been at the residence of her paternal grandparents, who lived in the Lewinsville area, judging from census and property records. Ruth’s middle name was Olga, according to Veterans Administration data.
In 1892, Ruth’s father bought a 50-acre parcel immediately to the east of the W&OD railroad and at the northern boundary of the Town of Vienna. The house for this property was in the area of the cul-de-sac for today’s Macy Avenue. Once living here, Ruth would have attended the Clarke School. However, it’s unclear when exactly the family moved to the property, because in the 1900 census, they were residing on K Street NE in Washington in a rental house. In October 1903, Ruth’s father was working on an addition to his barn near Vienna, according to the Fairfax Herald, suggesting that the family was living on the Vienna-area property at that point and that Ruth would have been attending the Clarke School in the 1903-04 school year. In November 1906, Ruth had a class average of 85 percent or higher, and thus she made the honor roll at the Clarke School, according to the Fairfax Herald.
After graduating from the Clarke School, Ruth went to high school and completed three years of college, according to the 1940 census. In 1913, her parents sold their 50-acres outside Vienna and apparently moved to Washington, DC, where they were living as of 1918, according to Fairfax County property records.
In October 1917, some six months after the United States entered World War I, Ruth enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve Force (USNRF), according to a Veterans Administration database accessible via Ancestry.com as well as her gravestone. The USNRF was a forerunner to today’s U.S. Navy Reserves. In 1916, Congress broadened the eligibility requirements for the USNRF, but didn’t include language that would restrict service by sex when it permitted service by “all persons who may be capable of performing special useful service for coastal defense,” according to the National Archives’ Prologue Magazine. In early 1917, as the Navy struggled with the demands of expanding the fleet and preparing for entry into the war, the Secretary of the Navy took advantage of the apparent oversight by Congress and interpreted the 1916 act as allowing women to serve. Women like Ruth who enlisted were designated Yeoman (F) by the Navy. Ruth was a Yeoman Third Class, judging from her gravestone. Yeoman (F) served largely as clerks and secretaries at navy bases in the continental U.S., according to the US Navy’s Heritage Command.
Apparently, Ruth performed her military service in Florida, because it was in Jacksonville where she married Brody T. Griffitts in March, 1918, according to State of Florida information. In 1928, she acquired a property in the Swannanoa neighborhood of Miami, according to the Miami Herald. As of 1929, Ruth was residing in Miami with Brody, a salesman, according to a Miami telephone directory. In 1933, however, the couple divorced in Miami. They did not have children. In 1935, Ruth was still living in Miami, which is also where her parents had moved to by 1920. As of 1940, Ruth O. Griffitts, divorced, was a lodger living on 18th Street NW in DC, northeast of Dupont Circle, according to the census. She was a typist for the government who had worked 34 weeks in 1939 and earned an income of $825. Her military experience remained important to her, judging from her role in a veterans organization. In the 1930s and 1940s she was active at “Pointsettia post 113, the only women’s post of the American Legion in the state of Florida, according to the Miami News. In the 1940s, Ruth served as the adjutant for the post, according to the Miami Herald. In the 1940s, she also served a poll worker in local elections, according to Miami newspaper articles.
Ruth never appears to have remarried. Ruth Olga Young Griffitts died on Christmas Eve, 1966, according to her gravestone. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
