Reuben Riggs

RIGGS

Posted By: Polly
Date: 9/23/2006 at 23:07:49

The Centerville Citizen
Appanoose County, Iowa
Saturday, February 8, 1873

Death of Reuben Riggs.

We have the Florence (Kan.) Pioneer giving the particulars of the death of Reuben Riggs, well known to the early settlers of Appanoose County. The Pioneer says: About the 20th of December, 1872, Judge Riggs, in company with twelve others, started out for Medicine Lodge, where they had recently laid out a town and had also taken claims. On the night of the 22d of December it suddenly turned exceedingly cold, with the wind directly from the north, and caught the Judge and his party out on the prairie, forty miles from any habitation, and with but a very scant supply of fuel. The party tried to shelter themselves as best they could but the wind increased, the cold became more and more intense, and very soon their fuel became entirely exhausted, and the party broke camp and started out to reach the timber upon Cedar Gulch, where they arrived about eleven o’clock at night upon the 23d of December. Only two out of the thirteen in the company escaped being more or less frozen in that dreary, fearful, tedious journey. Isaac Riggs, a son of the Judge, was so badly frozen that he has lost all his toes and several of his fingers. The Judge suffered so intensely from the cold during that journey that death ensued, after his arrival at Wellington, Sumner county. He died on the seventh day of January, 1873.

Judge Riggs was born in Tennessee, January 4, 1810, and married in 1832. He subsequently removed to Illinois and Missouri, in which States he lived a few years, and in 1840 emigrated to Iowa, which was at that time a territory. In Iowa he held many positions of honor and trust. He was a member of the convention which framed the Constitution of Iowa when Iowa was admitted into the Union as a State. Subsequently, during his residence in Iowa, he at different times was elected as the representative of Davis, Appanoose and Union Counties. He was also twice elected to the Senate of the State of Iowa.

In 1863 he removed from Iowa and settled in Kansas. Here his ability and worth soon made themselves known to the public. Thrice was he called upon and elected in the Legislature of Kansas—twice as a State Representative, and once as a State Senator. He served several terms as District Attorney, also as a County Judge, Probate Judge, and two terms as School Fund Commissioner, as well as a number of terms as County Attorney.

He was most eminently a man of the people. Respected, honored, trusted and beloved by one and all. Living for years upon the frontier, he has ever been an active man, an assiduous worker for the greatest good and benefit of his friends and neighbors. During his public life he was instrumental in organizing seven new counties. One in Missouri, three in Iowa and three in Kansas. As a man of the people, he has made sixteen farms, in all the different localities where he lived.

He loved a change of location, he loved a variety of occupation, he loved his fellow men. He was a man that graced any position. He would go from his law office to the cooper shop, from the Squire’s office or the District Court to the timber to split rails, with the same grace that marked him as a gentleman to be honored and revered, as when he represented his constituency in the Halls of Representatives or the Senate Chamber. A difference in position of occupation made no difference with the Judge. The same cordial hand was ever extended to the poor as well as the rich. Generous he was to a fault. Fortunes passed through his hands, but he died a poor man. It can be truly recorded of him that he never suffered any one to want when his aid could relieve their necessities. He was ever a friend, a guide, a counselor to the erring, a helper to the poor, a father to the orphan and needy ones.

In his religion he was a Universalist. His aim was ever to do good when the opportunity offered, and having performed that duty, to say nothing about it. He was in every respect a noble specimen of the frontiersman, large hearted, kind tempered, and almost doting on his friends, and as to enemies, he had none. Politically he was a Democrat, but always a people’s man, or policy lover rather than a strict partisan. He was an honored member of the Masonic fraternity, and died as he had lived, loved and respected by all who knew him. With some when they leave as to enter upon that unknown journey from whence the traveler can never return, we are called upon to draw the veil of charity around many traits of their character. But no cloak need be thrown over the spotless memory of the Hon. Reuben Riggs. His manhood needs no cloak. The more I call to mind his kind hearted goodness, the more I can recollect to admire in the man, and take pride in holding him and his worth, as an example for myself and friends to emulate and pattern after. But he is gone, left us forever. With this last tribute of respect I take a last farewell. Peace to his remains, which lie buried in the grave yard at Marion Centre, Kansas.