William S. Riggs

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

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William S. Riggs

1830-1923

Biographical Sketch

[Note: William S. Riggs's presence at the Mountain Meadows Massacre has not been confirmed.]

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.

To Utah and the Iron Mission

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. He was baptized in 1852. By 1854, Riggs had moved to Cedar City, the headquarters of the Iron Mission and the center of strenuous efforts to found a productive iron works there. In 1854, 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 the Iron Military District: Private William Riggs, Company E in Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion

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. 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 is not known with certainty but it is likely -- if he was in fact at the massacre -- that he was among the militia guard that escorted the emigrant men from the wagon circle on their march northward. 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, they do not list Riggs in Appendix C, their list of those whose presence at the massacre is confirmed. 

Leaving Cedar City

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 Toquerville, 1858. 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 Co., 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.

Moving to the High Valleys in Garfield County

Around 1878, Riggs and his wife and family moved to Panguitch in the middle of the Sevier River Valley in Garfield County. They and other families were founders of several settlements. 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 survived by his many children and grandchildren.

References

Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 1133; 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.

Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.