Rosalia Ellen Cox by Ruth H. Barker
On Washington's birthday, seventy-eight years ago, in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, Rosalia Cox Driggs was born. That was during the fateful winter of 1846, during the very month, indeed, when the first band of Pioneers to Utah left Nauvoo, crossing the Mississippi River on the ice, to begin their long journey across the plains into the valleys of the mountains.
A few months before the coming of this baby girl, Rosalia, her parents, Frederick Walter Cox and Emeline Whiting Cox, had been driven from their peaceful home in the Morley settlement, situated a few miles away from Nauvoo. A mob had ridden into this pioneer village, ordered the inoffensive inhabitant to get out of their houses, and then burned the dwellings before their eyes. Father and Mother Cox, with their little family of two boys and two girls, sought temporary refuge in the city of Nauvoo, then crowded with thousands of other homeless victims of mob violence.
Under these soul-trying circumstances little Rosalia came into the world. Her mother had hardly recovered from the illness of childbirth when the family was obliged to follow the trail of the pioneering band and take up its march across the hard roads of Iowa towards the land of the setting sun. They left Nauvoo in May of that year, and managed to get as far as the settlement at Mount Pisgah, which had been established as a kind of relief station on the way. Here Father Cox built a cabin home, and set to work to get supplies and a better outfit for the farther march.
It was another soul-testing winter that the family spent at Mount Pisgah. Father Cox with his brother Orville and others made several trips to Missouri to work for supplies to keep starvation from their doors. On returning home from one of these trips, they were caught in a blizzard, and becoming bewildered, all but perished in the snow. Only one match, which one of them had saved, stood between them and death. With it they finally managed to get a fire built, and the next day they reached home only to find that death had paid a cruel visit there.
Little Louisa Cox, the eldest sister of baby Rosalia, had passed away. The mother lay in a delirium of illness. She did not even know that her child had been taken from her. The whole community was so stricken at the time, that there were hardly enough well ones to take care of the sick.
Frederick Cox and his brother made a little coffin out of such rough lumber us they could saw by hand out of the timber they had. Into this they laid the little girl, tenderly, and then carrying their precious burden up the hill, the coffin suspended from a pole, whose ends rested on a shoulder of each, the two brothers buried Louisa in the rapidly growing cemetery at the top of Mount Pisgah.
This was not to be the end of their tragic sorrow. A little while later Eliza, the other sister of Rosalia, also passed away. Then Grandfather and Grandmother Whiting, the parents of Emeline Cox both died, and others of the family also later were laid on the hill beside them. The monument at Mount Pisgah erected in after years by those who bad lost loved ones at this place of sorrow, has six names of members of the Cox and Whiting family on it.
Spring brought promise of somewhat better days. After lingering long in the shadow of death, Emeline Cox finally recovered sufficiently for the family to go on across the rolling prairies of Iowa into the valley of the Missouri. Here on Silver Creek, a branch of the Missouri, some twenty miles southeast of Council Bluffs, they again made a home. A group of relatives and friends built on this stream the Cutler settlement. Frederick Cox and Chauncey Whiting, Emeline's brother, were chosen as counselors to Father Cutler, in the leadership of the new branch of the Church.
For several years things went on more peacefully and prosperously. Father Cox and his boys, Fred and Will, worked at his trade of chair-making. Every time they had a load of chairs ready they hitched up their ox team arid went down into Missouri to trade their furniture to the Missourians for such supplies as bacon, flour, groceries, clothing, tools, and other commodities. Missouri, at that time, was more developed than Iowa, the latter having just been opened for settlement.
For six years the family continued to live on Silver Creek. Little Rosalia meanwhile was developing into a romping, happy-hearted little girl. Her memories of those days, she kept to tell in after years, to her own little flock around their fireside. But the life on the velvety hills of Iowa was not to last long.
A call came from the valleys of the mountains for those who had settled among the bluffs along the Missouri, to take up their march to the mountains. In 1852 the Cox family, leaving many of their relatives behind, loaded their household goods and supplies into their three covered wagons, each drawn by four or five yoke of oxen, and joined an emigrant train for the farther west.
The story of their crossing the great plains is one of the treasured tales of the family. How interested were the children of Rosalia Driggs who would often sit in their happy home in the after years to hear her tell of her experiences in those days — of the sun that seemed to rise right out of the ground, and again set there, of the Indians who came begging for flour and sugar, of the great herds of buffalo and antelope, and of the wonders of the great mountains, when first they came within sight of them.
Then the story of the birth of dear little Emily, out there on the old Platte River, their waiting but two days and then resuming the journey with a bed arranged as best they could in the light wagon for the mother and babe.
There was also the story of how little Rosalia, when they came to the Black Hills, began to pick up all of the pretty pebbles she could find and put them into the laden wagon. She had nearly a bushel of them stowed away before her father discovered them. It nearly broke her heart to have the pebbles thrown out, but her gentle father consoled her by saying, "You will find all the pretty stones you want, and more, my child, when you get to the valleys of the mountains.” [Rosalia was six when she and her family crossed the plains in the John B. Walker Company. They departed on the 26th to 30th of June 1852 and arrived in Salt Lake Valley on the 2nd through the 7th of October 1852. There were about 258 individuals in the company when it began its journey from the outfitting post at Kanesville, Iowa (present day Council Bluffs.)]
And after they had reached the valleys, they went directly to Manti, then the outpost town in the Sanpete Valley. It was in this picturesque region that Chief Walker, with his brothers Arropine, and Ammon, and Ankawakets, and Sanpitch made their rendezvous. Father Cox was one of the men who helped greatly to keep these warlike chieftans and their Ute followers on friendly terms with the whites. The Indians always found a welcome at the home of Father Cox, and in him a wise counselor.
A host of rich girlhood memories filled the mind of Rosalia Cox connecting with these early days in Manti. It would take a volume of good size to repeat all of the stories she used to tell her children of her experiences with her father and mother, and brothers and sisters in and around the big old stone house Father Cox built for his family. A social center it became, with music and home dramatics, and the reading of good books. (She and Cousin Adelia sat up all one night to read (Uncle Tom's Cabin). And there was spinning, weaving, and knitting, and other household duties always going on. It was a hive of happy industry permeated by love of one another and a love of God.
Rosalia was a leading spirit in the home. Bright at her books, she was soon leading the others in her studies. Finally she was set by her father at the work of teaching her little brothers and sisters. Then she was made a teacher in the village schools. Many a pioneer boy and girl was given his first schooling by this energetic pioneer girl.
During the days just following the Civil War, when Frederick Cox was away on a mission to England, the Black Hawk War broke out. It was a tragic time that followed. The brothers of Rosalia and their friends were called into action; Sanpete county became a center of military activities. Other parts of the state sent men to help conquer the Ute chieftain who was raiding the frontier settlements, running off the settlers' stock and murdering those found unable to protect themselves.
Among those who went into Sanpete with the military forces was Benjamin W. Driggs. He was then a [30 year old] major on the staff of General W. B. Pace. While encamped at Manti, he met Rosalia Cox [ 21 years old], and a year afterwards, when the Indian war was brought to a close, they were married. [Benjamin W. Driggs already had a wife and five children. Rosalia became the sister wife of the oldest daughter of Parley P. Pratt on October 5, 1867 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.]
It was in the city of Pleasant Grove that Benjamin and Rosalia made their first residence. Here for several years they lived, building together. To help out, while her husband was away on a mission in England, Rosalia again taught school. Later when the telegraph office was opened she became the operator, she having previously learned the telegrapher's art in old Manti. When her husband, returning from his mission, had opened a store, she assisted him in that work.
This business of merchandising brought about another "move" to the town of West Jordan. A smelter had been opened near that place, and trade was brisk. Throughout the rest of her life until age compelled a cessation of her labors, Rosalia Cox Driggs was actively interested in different commercial enterprises, not for their own sake, but for the sake of helping her husband to gather the means with which to educate their boys and girls, and surround them with the uplifting things of life.
Her home was a literary center. It was filled with good books. She was a great lover of reading. Every night she would gather her little ones and those of the neighbors about her and read to them poems and stories, "lending to the rhyme of the poet the beauty of her voice."
She was active always in the recreational activities of the communities where she lived. As member of the home dramatic company of Pleasant Grove, she helped to radiate much choice entertainment to the people there, and other nearby pioneer communities. She was ever helping plan and give wholesome recreation for young and old. The young people especially flocked to her home to find good fun.
In the later years of her life she became an active worker in' the Relief Society, ministering to the needs of the poor and the sick. Only her own illness, which in these later years had held down her sweet-souled activities, has kept her from these labors of love. But not even illness could chain her spirit. Up until her right arm was stricken with paralysis, she was ever writing letters of sunshine and helpfulness to her children and grandchildren and her friends.
Several of the recent years of her life she spent in the sunny land of California with her daughters, Mrs. Lucille Heller and Mrs. Geneva Halverson. More recently she has made her home in American Fork, Utah, with her daughter, Mrs, Maud Christensen, and in Idaho Falls with her daughter, Mrs. Leonora Dowd. Besides these children, and two others, Clarice and Ralph, who died in infancy, she has three sons all actively engaged in education, Frank M. Driggs, Superintendent of the State School for the Deaf and Blind, Ogden; Howard R. Driggs, Professor of English Education, University of Utah, and New York University; and Burton W. Driggs, Superintendent of the State School for the Deaf, Devil's Lake, North Dakota. .
Her husband, Benjamin W. Driggs, passed away in October, 1915, at Ogden, Utah, where for several years they made their home. Mrs. Lucille Heller, her daughter, also passed away in California, in 1919.
The life of Rosalia Cox Driggs has been an inspiration. She will live forever in the hearts of the thousands she has blessed. Out of an almost tragic babyhood, she was privileged to rise into a happy childhood, a radiant girlhood, to become a helpmeet, indeed, for her husband, a leading worker for the uplift of every community where she lived, and withal to crown her life with that most blessed of all womanly achievements — a saintly, self-sacrificing motherhood.
Edited and compiled by Ruth H. Barker
Source: The Relief Society Magazine, July 1924, pgs. 333-337.
Uploaded by Emily Barker Farrer, 2010