First Families Pioneer Spotlight: Isaac Riddle
Excerpts from the Autobiography of ISAAC RIDDLE (Pioneer), Came to Utah in 1850, written by himself, submitted to the Utah Genealogical Association by a descendant applying for a First Families of Utah Certificate.
My Father was John Riddle and my mother Elizabeth Stewart. I
was born on the 22nd day of March, 1830, in Boone County, Kentucky. My Father
was always a great reader. It was while living in Hickman County, Kentucky that
he read the Book of Mormon and A Voice of Warning and became fully convinced of
the truth of the Gospel. In the summer of 1843 two Mormon Elders came to our
community to preach. By then Father and mother were baptized, shortly after,
two sisters and a brother were also baptized, On the 15th day of June, 1844,
having become convinced of the truth of the gospel, I was baptized and
confirmed by Zachariah Wilson.
We began the journey in July, crossing the Missouri on the
12th day of that month. This was in the summer of 1850. I was then 20 years old,
and was one elected by the company with which we traveled to hunt wild meat.
When we struck the Platte River, we followed the old trail of the California
gold hunters. A company on its way to the Golden Gate had journeyed along that
way a few weeks ahead of us, and the trail was marked here and there with the
newly made graves of its members who had died with cholera. It was not long
before this dread disease struck our company, and quite a number were taken
away by it. Father took it, but had had it once before and directed Mother and
myself how to take care of him. He suffered much, but by our ministrations and
our prayers he recovered.
On the 15th day of September, 1850, we reached Salt Lake
City, a small village where there were a few log cabins, adobe houses, sage
brush, and myriads of black crickets that ate up all the green stuff that grew.
Our stay in Salt Lake City was very brief. Only a few days after our arrival we
went north to Ogden, where Captain Brown and a few others had located the year
before. We erected a log cabin in the fort site. That fall Father and I worked
for Loren Farr and Charles Hubbard on a contract to build or rather dig a
trench for a saw mill. In the winter we moved north a few miles with about two
hundred head of cattle belonging to the Ogden settlers and wintered them there.
On the sixth day of March, 1853, 1 married Miss Mary Ann Levie, and that summer
worked on a ferry on Bear River, eighty miles north of Salt Lake City, clearing
up $1,500.00 which I invested in fifty acres of improved land and horses and
cattle. The fall and winter passes happily, and on the 6th day of March, 1854,
one year from the day of my marriage, my first boy was born. He did not live,
and my wife became very ill, so that I was distracted with grief.
And in this heavy time, when my heart was like a weight of
lead in my breast, a call came from President Brigham Young to go on a mission
to Southern Utah among the Indians. My wife was hardly expected to live, and it
was the trial of my life to go and leave her in the condition she was in, but
it was the call of the Lord, and I felt as if it has to be obeyed. And so I
picked up and, trusted in the Lord for help and guidance. My partner was Jacob
Hamlin, and together we traveled three hundred miles to the southern part of
Utah amongst the Piute Indians. The best and hardest ten years of my life I put
in on that mission. The little I had made was soon gone, and it was not long
before I did not have a coat for my back; but though it was hard, and I was poor,
still I lived through it, and I learned to bless the Lord for what it taught
me. We traveled and preached to Indians, and in the summer of 1855 and 1856 we
baptized about two hundred. We built a small fort on the Santa Clara River
among the Piutes and taught them how to work and build, to raise crops by means
of irrigation, to observe Sunday a sacred day, and to pray. It is a singular
fact that when they had learned the principles of the gospel they had more
faith than did many white people, who had had more chances to learn.” Thanks to
the Living God, who hears and answers prayers when His children humble
themselves before him, I can truly testify that He lives! I have often seen His
power made manifest. Many times I have been healed by and through the administrations
of the elders of the Latter-day Saints. And many have been healed under my
hands. And I thank the God of Heaven for the truth of the gospel and for the
principles of the gospel revealed to His Latter-day Prophets. I am truly
thankful that I live in this dispensation of the world, when the Lord has seen
fit to restore the principles of everlasting salvation to the children of men,
and that I had the privilege to hear and the heart to obey. I have a name and
place with His people, and I humbly ask the Lord to help me to so live that I
may always have His spirit to guide me to the truth. Through the favor and
grace of the Lord I have been blessed with a large family, in which I have
always taken a just pride.
My first child, a boy, George, lived but two weeks. Our next
child, a girl, Mary Ann, named after my first wife, Mary Ann Levie, was born on
the 7th of December, 1855, and lived for nearly twelve years. On the 17th day
of December, 1857, my wife presented me with another boy, Isaac J. Riddle, who
is still living and who has a large family of his own. The next, a boy, J.M.
Riddle, was born July 11, 1858, and he also has a large family. Madera, a girl,
was born January 2, 1861 and the last child by my first wife, Laura, a girl,
was born on the 28th of December, 1863. These two last named girls died in the
fall of 1867. In the spring of 1864, 1 was released from my Indian mission by
Apostle Erastus Snow.
At this time I had quite a family, three wives and eight
children. I felt that it was now necessary to get together some of the goods of
this world in order to support them. I moved in June to Pine Creek, eighteen
miles north of Beaver City, close to the subsequent location of the Cove Creek
Fort. There I ranched successfully for ten years. During the time of my Manti
Temple work, I bought a little home in Provo in order to have my boys and girls
near the Brigham Young Academy. It has always been one of the greatest desires
of my life to see my boys and girls well educated. There is nothing I would not
sacrifice for them, for I love them. I also joined the company which built the
Springville Roller Mills, later buying the other members of the company out and
running myself. In this year of the Lord eighteen hundred ninety-eight, when
this sketch of my life was written, and I am near the mark of three score years
and ten, I have built a little home in the Third Ward at Provo, and then, I
intend to spend the remainder of my days.
ADDENDUM- After the completion of the
journal of his life he lived for a period of nine years. As he had intended, he
made his home during that time in Provo. Shortly thereafter his health began to
fail. He suffered a great deal with rheumatism and paralysis. He lived in the
Third Ward of Provo where he had planned to pass the remainder of his days. He
died on September 1, 1906. Isaac Riddle is buried in the Provo City Cemetery,
In Provo, Utah County Utah.
UGA's First Families of Utah honors those who have helped to build Utah into the great place that it is today. Anyone with ancestry from Utah can apply to join First Families by paying the application fee and submitting genealogical proof of their lineage back to the ancestor of interest. If accepted, they will receive an official First Families certificate honoring their ancestor, who will then be added to UGA’s official database of immigrant ancestors to Utah. For more information about this program or to apply for a First Families of Utah Certificate, click here.
