Inspecting Trees

I enjoy watching BYU television for many reasons.  There are devotional messages from various speakers covering various subjects. The Conference Reports are a favorite. On Sunday we can watch Music and the Spoken Word and a worship service of our Church. There are so many other programs with uplifting content.

Since the first of the year some new programming has joined the broadcast schedule. My mother and my children are hooked on a program called The Wind at My Back, about a family in northeastern Canada in the early 1900’s. I am beginning to warm up to it, but could take it or leave it. It is not so with my boy.

I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until yesterday, when on our way home from a family get-together in Brigham City, my son realized that he had missed the latest episode and there were no more chances to view it before the next installment. He was very upset. It is occasionally suspect in relation to portraying the values my wife and I would have our children learn, but it is definitely not as far gone as the Disney channel ½ hour programs we encourage them NOT to watch.

Two of my absolute favorites from the new line of programs are The Road to Zion, a series that explores the international history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The top of the list currently, is The Generations Project. I happened to catch an episode this very night, and it touched me greatly.

I have been AWOL for about a week, not posting anything, and hope to get back to the family history stories I had started here. The Generations Project is a new reality series that helps those who have questions about their family history investigate their own identities by walking in the shoes of their ancestors.

Tonight’s episode was a rerun but I had never seen it before. It was the story of Maile Mossman who has lived all her life in Maui, Hawaii, where there are strong oral traditions. Maile is a Kupuna, a teacher of oral tradition through Hawaiian music. Unfortunately, Maile knows very little about her maternal side of the family and is unable to pass on oral traditions to her own children.

I was especially drawn to the experience of a grandmother of Maile, who was a leper exiled to a leper colony. There she met and married a man who had also been diagnosed with leprosy. While together they had 6 children, 4 who lived. The children were removed from the colony shortly after birth to prevent them from contracting the disease, never to be seen again by their mother.

Circumstances allowed her grandmother’s husband to be declared cured, but instead of leaving he stayed with her until her death. He was then able to leave the colony and rejoin his children who had been sent to live with other relatives. Such a heartbreaking story, with its accompanying evidence of love and devotion that was discovered by the research the project was able to perform for her.

My favorite part of this episode was a visit to the same island where the colony was located, walking the ground her grandmother walked, and hearing about the circumstances these people lived under. This quote from the episode exhibits the purpose of the project, as well as the importance of genealogy to the LDS Church.

Maile said, (speaking of the grandfather she never knew of until this research) “I like him. He’s admirable to me. He made her life wonderful and she probably did for him or he would have gone when he was cured. The explanation of her coming in …. It’s the buildup of the details and data I have learned, together with the little bit I already know of her …. It was 115 years ago, but time means nothing, families are forever, so time means nothing. That is why it affects me … but in a good way. I’m not weeping for her suffering, I’m weeping for the good in her life.

If this is also interesting to the few who might come across this post, I hope each of you have a way to view the program, possibly online at BYU TV.  I can relate to the desire that those featured on this program have, to learn more about their heritage.

My father died when I was 23.  Unfortunately it was also before I really became interested in the things he experienced that I could have learned from.  In turn, I never knew my grandfathers in this life, both had passed away before I was born.  All I have left is the information that others have taken the time to write down or relate to me. 

Finding a way to connect with those who have come before us …. What a powerful thing that is.

Great-Great Grandpa – Part II

Continuation of this post

After leaving Salt Lake in 1855 to farm in Lehi, Utah, William and Mary settled there for a time, and two children were born. The second child was named William F. Rigby Jr. (my grandmother’s father). It was here that William entered into polygamy when he took a second wife, Lousia . After 2 years she left the family.

In 1860 William travelled to Cache Valley to scout out a place to move his young family. After spending the summer in Wellsville and raising a successful crop, he returned to Lehi for the winter. The next spring he brought his wife and children back to Cache Valley to settle in Wellsville. William married his third wife in 1863 and fourth in 1864, then fifth in 1867. His third and fourth wives were half-sisters and his fifth wife was a cousin to the third and fourth wives.

William was called to be the Bishop of the Clarkston Ward in the fall of 1867. It appears that part of this family stayed in the Wellsville area for a time. After two years in Clarkston it was decided that a site a few miles south would be better for a settlement, the townspeople met and voted.  The majority decision was to move from Clarkston to the new location and New-town was founded under the direction of Bishop Rigby.

The Rigby’s moved to a ranch property 2 miles west of the Newton site in 1969, constructing a 2-room house and later a stone house. Another of William’s wives moved up to the ranch property from Wellsville.

Once the process of moving to the new settlement began, a few of the Clarkston settlers had mixed feelings about leaving their homes. With discord growing, Bishop Rigby counseled with President Brigham Young. The Prophet felt that both communities could survive and the Clarkston site should not be abandoned, those wishing to stay were welcome to do so.

In the Spring of 1871, a wood frame home for the Rigby family was to be built in Newton. When the chimney was complete, the test run proved disastrous when the home burned to the ground, the first loss to fire in Newton that I know of. When the fire debris was cleared a stone house was built on the same spot.

With the settlement of Newton and his move to the new community, William was released as the Bishop of Clarkston and called to be Newton’s Bishop. He also served as a Captain in the Nauvoo Legion.

In the summer of 1870 crop failure from the lack of water in Newton threatened many with the loss of their homes and farms. Bishop Rigby and Clarkston’s new Bishop met and negotiated a settlement over water rights for the two communities. There was still concern for the future, and constructing a dam for irrigation water was the answer.

A companion project was a bridge across the Bear River to provide an easier way to transport their crops to the larger markets on the east side of the valley. The bridge was completed first and then efforts were turned to the building of the reservoir. Bishop Rigby was among the members of the community who were charged with supervising the reservoir construction.

A site three miles to the east of Clarkston was chosen, where the runoff from the Clarkston Creek could be dammed and support the farms of Newton. As the leader of the Newton Ward, a son of Bishop Rigby was selected to dump the first load of fill. His ox refused to cross the creek so another man went around him and the dam was started.

A marker erected by the D.U.P. sits on the northwest corner of Newton’s Town Square and reads: Located three and one-half miles north of this marker, the first storage reservoir in Utah was begun in 1871, and completed in enlarged form after going out three times. Length of dam, 127 ft., height, 28 ft, made of earth and rocks. Cost: $10,000.00. Reservoir length: One and a half miles. Capacity, 1,566 acre feet. Original building committee: Bishop William F. Rigby, Franklin W. Young, Stephen Catt, Swen Jacobs and John Jenkins. First caretakers and water masters: John Griffin, A.P. Welshman and Jonas N. Beck.

The claim of first irrigation reservoir in Utah is substantiated in this Utah.Gov document.  This was a milestone in the development of agriculture for those who moved from Clarkston to Newton.

To Be Continued

Great-Great Grandpa – Part I

Earlier this week of an evening, I found the TV on KUED and a program called The Mormons was playing. I believe I have seen bits and pieces of it before, but only recognized the images, not the narratives and interviews. The first party of the Saints was making the trek westward when I joined the broadcast. As I watched I began to step back in time to stories from my family history, and I have spent a good deal of time pondering those stories since that night.

I am blessed to have access to much information about my father’s parents, as well as a large text about my most famous relative, from my dad’s mother’s side of the family. My mom relates verbal histories of her family, but nothing is on paper, that I have seen. When I take the time to learn of them, I am amazed at the stories of my ancestors. My wife’s family history is equally as interesting.

After watching the PBS program I have been compelled to revisit my family history that is contemporary to the events described in the documentary, and therefore write about it. I think I’ll start with my father’s side of the family where the most information exists.

On the pedigree chart of my grandmother is a name that may be well known in the Northern Utah and Southern Idaho area, not just because of the number of his posterity that still live in the region. William Frederick Rigby is found among the names of my ancestors, as with many others whom I know and even more I’ve never met.

He was a pioneer, a farmer, a church and civic leader, a missionary.  He was also a polygamist, with 7 wives and 38 children.

His namesake, William F. Rigby Jr., was the father of Orpah Rigby, who married Knute Fabricius. They are my father’s parents. My dad’s father was born in Denmark. The Restored Gospel reaching Grandpa Fabricius’ family in Denmark put into place the events necessary for these two to meet and fall in love. A large volume of text that documents the life of William F. Rigby Sr. has been published, which I am using as a source as I relate his story.

William F. Rigby Sr. was born in England in 1833, to an un-wed mother. His mother did later marry, a Methodist minister, and in 1846 she died in childbirth. At 15, William left home to live in Stockport with his mother’s sister. William was baptized into the LDS Church in 1848, and he married Mary Clark in 1852. In the spring of 1853 they left England with a group of church members to immigrate to Utah.

William arrived in Salt Lake City on October 5, 1853, sent with a few others in advance of the wagons to request help for the rest of his party, their provisions had run out. Help was sent and the remainder of the group arrived in Salt Lake on October 13th.

The first winter in Salt Lake was difficult.  Doing what was necessary to provide for their needs, while living in a wagon box in the dead of a Utah winter would be a daunting task.

To Be Continued