Samuel Riggs

SAMUEL4 RIGGS (16James3, Edmond2, James1) was born 13 July 1786, Maryland[387] or Pennsylvania, died 31 Mar. 1875, Jennings Twp. Fayette Co., Ind.,[388] and was buried in Garden of Memories Cem., Lyonsville, Fayette Co., Ind.[ 389] He married 18 Sept. 1810, Washington Co., Ohio,[390] ELIZABETH HENTHRON ROSS, born 5 Apr. 1795,[391] daughter of Andrew and Mary (Lyon) Ross, and died 15 or 19 June 1874,[392] and was buried with her husband.

Excerpted from a 1917 history of Fayette Co., Ind.:[393]

One of the oldest families in Fayette county is the Riggs family, which was established here in territorial days by Samuel Riggs and his wife Elizabeth, who came over here from Ohio eight years before Fayette county was or- ganized as a civic unit and settled on a tract of land in what later came to be organized as Jennings township, where they established their home and where they spent the rest of their lives. They were the parents of twelve children and their descendants in the fourth generation today form a numerous family throughout this part of the state.

Samuel Riggs was born in Maryland on July 13, 1786, a son of James and Mary (Johnson) Riggs, who also were born in Maryland, representatives of old colonial families, and who later moved to Washington county, Ohio, where Samuel grew to manhood and where he married, on Sep- tember 18, 1810, Elizabeth Ross, daughter of Andrew and Mary Ross. The next year, in 1811, Samuel Riggs walked over into the then Territory of Indiana, “spying out the land,” and found here in the upper valley of the White Water what he had been seeking, a land very fair and good to look upon. He entered a quarter of a section of land in the woods four or five miles east of the point where John Conner had established his trading post on the river, and there, near the middle of what later came to be organized as Jennings township, decided to establish his home. He returned to Ohio for his wife and the two came out here into the wilderness. They transported their household goods by flatboat down the river to Cincin- nati and from that point began the toilsome journey by wagon through the woods up the old White Water trail to their new home in the wilder- ness. Upon their arrival there they put up a log cabin and began the labo- rious task of creating a habitable home amid conditions that would have appalled all but the stoutest hearts. Samuel Riggs was an energetic and in- dustrious man and from the very beginning of his operations in this coun- ty prospered. He became the owner of two hundred and twenty-one acres of land in Jennings township and was also the owner of four hundred and eighty acres in Howard county. Samuel Riggs died at his home in Jennings township on March 31, 1875. His wife, who was born on April 5, 1795, had preceded, him to the grave less than a year, her death having occurred on June 19, 1874. She was an earnest member of the Methodist Episcopal church and she and her husband exerted a potent influence for good in the formative period of the now prosperous farming community in which they had settled in pioneer days. They were the parents of twelve children, Denton, John, Mary, Ruth, Stephen, James S., Andrew, S. H., Kinsey, Rossie, Jane and Nancy.[394] [to be continued]