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.

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