William S. Riggs

William Sears Riggs, his personal and family background, and his alleged involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre

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William S. Riggs

1830-1923

Biographical Sketch

[There is uncertainty whether William S. Riggs participated in the Mountain Meadows Massacre or was on the ground when the Arkansas company was besieged or killed.]

Early Years in Indiana

William Sears Riggs was born in 1830 to John Riggs and Mary Gillman in Putnam County in west-central Indiana. His parents had been among the founders of Putnam County in the early 1820s. Evidently, his parents were in Kentucky before that. The 1880 census shows his father born in Kentucky and his mother in Pennsylvania. (Contra are genealogy records showing his father and mother from Connecticut.) One of his brothers was named Andrew Jackson Riggs who was the namesake of one of his sons.

Stopping in Utah on the Way to California

In July 1850, Riggs and his brother John Lyle Riggs stopped in Great Salt Lake City en route to the California Gold Rush. William became interested in the Mormons and reminded.

Pioneering in Lehi in Utah Valley

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Map of Utah County, Utah.

Late in 1850, Riggs moved south to Utah Valley and then continued to a promising new area north of Utah Lake. They were among its original founders. Originally called Evansville, it was later named Lehi.

Another group of new arrivals included Joel White and his brothers John and Samuel, who, like Riggs, would later move to Cedar City. Riggs along with Charles Hopkins, Joel White and Samuel White were among the initial group of settlers who built the first cabins to form three sides of a fort on Snow Springs. The "fort" enclosed the spring but in the early years there were insufficient settlers to build the cabins along the fourth wall to make a secure enclosure.

Riggs and the others pioneered the new community, building cabins, planting crops and digging irrigation ditches to keep their crops alive. In 1852, Riggs was baptized into the church.

The Walker War erupted in summer 1853 and the conflict was particularly intense in Utah County. The pioneering settlers abandoned exposed settlements, made fortifications, guarded settlements and livestock and after their stock had been raided by Ute Indians, went in pursuit of it. Riggs would have played some part in these events. The sharp conflict in Utah Valley may have impacted his decision to relocate to other parts.

Moving to Cedar City and the Ironworks in Southern Utah

The Early Ironworks in Cedar City

By 1854, Riggs had moved to Cedar City, the headquarters of the Iron Mission and the center of strenuous efforts to found a productive ironworks there. From the beginning, Riggs was a fiddler in community dances.

In early February, 1855, twenty-five-year-old Riggs married seventeen-year-old Sarah Reeves at Cedar City. She was an English immigrant, the daughter of William Reeves and Frances Long. They had been early converts to Mormonism in Shropshire, England. In 1842, they had immigrated to Nauvoo, Illinois. In 1849, they had immigrated to Utah, William Reeves dying while en route.

In moving to Cedar City, William S. Riggs was settling in an area dominated by the Deseret Iron Company, known more familiarly as the Ironworks. See Summary of Deseret Iron Company for a brief summary of its early development.

In April 1857, the delivery of a new steam engine from Great Salt Lake City seemed to raise new hope for the Ironworks. Working from April to June they installed the steam engine and completed the new engine house. In the first week of July, they were ready to begin smelting. They “put on the blast” and had a modicum of success. But they continued to be plagued with problems ranging from poor quality raw materials to smelting equipment that lacked technical sophistication. When in late July the steam engine seized with sand from the dirty creek water, they speedily dug a reservoir to store a supply of clean water for the boiler. They continued making smelting runs through August. All the while crews at the ironworks manned all the necessary functions there, while other crews, mainly miners and teamsters, gathered the raw materials – iron ore, coal, limestone, and wood – necessary to sustain smelting.

The smelting continued until September 13. In other words, around September 3, when a dispute arose between some settlers and several men in the passing Arkansas company, the blast furnace was running nonstop. And when Cedar City militiamen, many of them ironworkers, mustered to Mountain Meadows where they were involved in the massacre on September 11, other ironworkers in Cedar City continued the smelting runs night and day. For additional details, see Smelting at the Ironworks in 1857.

From late April to September, those working up the canyon in mining or hauling wood, coal, limestone, rock, sand or “adobies” to the ironworks were Isaac C. Haight, James Williamson, George Hunter, Joseph H. Smith, Ira Allen, Ellott Wilden, Swen Jacobs, Alex Loveridge, Joel White, Ezra Curtis, Samuel McMurdie, Samuel Pollock, John Jacobs, John M. Higbee, John M. Macfarlane, Samuel Jewkes, Nephi Johnson, Thomas Cartwright, William Bateman, Elias Morris, Benjamin Arthur, Joseph H. Smith, Robert Wiley, and Philip Klingensmith. Those working at the ironworks on the furnace, engine, coke ovens or blacksmith shop included Elias Morris, John Humphries, Ira Allen, John Urie, Benjamin Arthur, James Williamson, Joseph H. Smith, Samuel Jewkes, Joseph Clews, Richard Harrison, William C. Stewart, William Bateman, John M Macfarlane, John M. Higbee, John Jacobs, George Hunter, Samuel Pollock, William S. Riggs, Alex Loveridge, Ellott Wilden, Ezra Curtis, Eliezar Edwards, Swen Jacobs, Joel White, and Thomas Cartwright. (The two lists overlap because some worked both in the canyon and at the Ironworks.) Other prominent figures at the ironworks who were not later involved at Mountain Meadows were Samuel Leigh, George Horton, James H. Haslem, Laban Morrell, John Chatterley, Thomas Gower, Thomas Crowther and others.

During this period of 1857, Sears was briefly involved at the ironworks. As July moved into August, Sears worked for a day in the large crew of more than 40 building the reservoir to store water for the boiler of the steam engine. That is the only mention of Riggs working for the ironworks that year.

In the Iron Military District: Private William Riggs, Company E in Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion

In 1857, the Iron Military District consisted of four battalions led by regimental commander Col. William H. Dame. The platoons and companies in the first battalion drew on men in and around Parowan. (It had no involvement at Mountain Meadows.) Major Isaac Haight commanded the 2nd Battalion whose personnel in its many platoons and two companies came from Cedar City and outer-lying communities to the north such as Fort Johnson. Major John Higbee headed the 3rd Battalion whose many platoons and two companies were drawn from Cedar City and outer-lying communities to the southwest such as Fort Hamilton. Major John D. Lee of Fort Harmony headed the 4th Battalion whose platoons and companies drew on its militia personnel from Fort Harmony, the Southerners at the newly-founded settlement in Washington, the Indian interpreters at Fort Clara, and the new settlers at Pinto.

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In 1857, William S. Riggs and Jabez Durfee were privates in a platoon in Company E under Captain Elias Morris in Major Isaac C. Haight's 2nd Battalion. Other members of the Company E known or suspected of involvement in the massacre were second lieutenants Anthony J. Stratton, Richard Harrison, Swen Jacobs and Ira Allen, sergeants Samuel Pollock (Riggs's brother-in-law), Samuel McMurdie and Robert Wiley, and privates Samuel Jukes/Jewkes and John Jacobs. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.

It is not known when Riggs and his unit arrived at Mountain Meadows; it could have been any time between mid-day Tuesday the 8th to late afternoon on Thursday the 10th. His exact role in the massacre, if he was there, is not known.

Riggs was named in the 1859 federal arrest warrant issued by Judge John Cradlebaugh and was named as a participant in Stenhouse's 1873 Rocky Mountain Saints, which follows Cradlebaugh's arrest warrant. However, he was not named by John D. Lee nor mentioned by other witnesses during the Lee trials of 1875-1876. He is not known to have made any statements about the massacre.

Riggs, however, may not have been present on the day of the massacre. Walker, Turley and Leonard did not find corroboration of his presence. Thus, in Massacre at Mountain Meadows they do not list Riggs in Appendix C, their list of those whose presence at the massacre is confirmed.

Leaving Cedar City

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William S. Riggs was among those who abandoned Cedar City shortly after the massacre and the failure of the irons works. In 1858, Riggs was among the six families who moved down Ash Creek and founded the settlement of Toquerville. His brother-in-laws, Sarah's brother, Josiah Reeves, and the Irishman Samuel Pollock who had married Sarah's sister, Elizabeth, were among the founders. The other family heads were Joshua T. Willis, John Willis, and Willis Young. All were interested in raising cotton. Riggs was also known as a carpenter and cooper. In addition, he had a crimper which he used to fashion old copper boilers into washboards. He also provided his neighbors with rudimentary medical treatment by setting bones and pulling teeth. Riggs and his wife Sarah eventually had two sons and eight daughters; all except one lived to adulthood and married.

Service During the Black Hawk War, late 1860s

In 1866, Riggs was a private in the 3rd platoon, Volunteer Cavalry Company, 1st Brigade of the Iron Military District and was involved in military reconnaisance and operations during the Black Hawk War. Under the leadership of Captain James Andrus, Riggs rode in an expedition from Washington County through Garfield County (his future home) to near the junction of the Grand and Green Rivers in eastern Utah during that war. Also in the company was William Slade. They were among the first to explore the Escalante Valley.

A few short years later, settlers such as William Riggs from Panguitch would push east into the Escalante Valley and found a new settlement in that remote valley. This was his fourth time in pioneering a new region in Utah Territory.

Moving to the High Valleys in Garfield County

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Map of Garfield County, Utah.

Around 1878, Riggs and his wife and family moved to Panguitch in the middle of the Sevier Valley in Garfield County. They and other families were founders of several settlements. Panguitch Lake had been homesteaded in 1874 and in the following years, Riggs was among those who build ranches that rimmed the mountain lake. In the 1880s, Riggs and his sons were cattlemen in Henrieville, Garfield County.

In 1893, Sarah Reeves Riggs died and was buried in Henrieville. Riggs remained in Garfield County and evidently never remarried. He lived for another three decades. In 1923, he passed away in his early 90s in Panguitch where he was living with one of his sons. He was buried in Henrieville. He was one of several Mountain Meadows militiamen who lived into the 1920s. He was survived by his many children and grandchildren.

References

Bigler and Bagley, ed., Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 235; Chidester, Golden Nuggets of Pioneer Days: A History of Garfield County, 120, 216; Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 1133 (photo); Gardner, History of Lehi, 14, 22, 27 (photo); Gottfredson, Indian Depredations in Utah, 225; Larson, A History of Toquerville, 39-40 (biographical sketch); Seegmiller, A History of Iron County, 174; Newell and Talbott, A History of Garfield County, 153, 172; Shirts and Shirts, A Trial Furnace, 357, 487-88, 495; Woodbury, "A History of Southern Utah and its National Parks," Utah Historical Quarterly, 12/3-4 (Jul.-Oct. 1944), 147; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 393 fn. 2.

For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.

External Links

For further information on William Sears Riggs, see:

• http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
• Deseret Iron Company Account Book, 1854-1867: http://www.footnote.com/document/241905844/

Further information and confirmation needed. Please comment or contact 1857_militia@roadrunner.com.