Benjamin Woodbury Driggs compiled by Ruth H. Barker

History written by Alice Driggs Brown

Benjamin Woodbury Driggs, son of Shadrach Ford and Eliza Elizabeth White was born in Fredonia, Lichen County, Ohio on May 13, 1837.

Two years after his parents moved to Illinois, where they joined the Mormon Church and lived in Nauvoo until the spring of 1846, they, with other saints were driven out of that city. The events of these times were impressed on the boy's memory, and he recalled in vivid detail the scenes associated with the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, and other historic events connected with the early history of the church.

One memory he cherished was the sacrifice he made for the building of the Nauvoo Temple. He gave a treasured little wagon his father had made for him to the workman constructing the temple when they showed an interest in it. This young boy assisted his father in his wagon shop and was named for a Mr. Benjamin Woodbury who had taught Benjamin’s father wagon building and furniture-making. Shadrach was foreman of a wagon shop where he helped make many of the wagons which crossed the plains. For six years after the exodus from Nauvoo the family lived in Iowa, on Big Pigeon Creek. Here preparations were made to cross the plains and in 1852 the journey to the Rocky Mountains was begun. The company in which the Driggs family came to Utah was commanded by Captain Uriah Curtis.

The Uriah Curtis company departed Kanesville, Iowa (present day Council Bluffs) on June 28, 1852. There were about 365 individuals and 51 wagons in the company. They arrived in the Salt lake Valley between September 29 and October 1st, 1852. In the Driggs family were Benjamin’s father and mother - Shadrach Ford Driggs aged 38 and Eliza Elizabeth White aged 39. There were also seven children: Benjamin aged 15, Hannah aged 13, Appollos aged 11, Isaac aged 10, Parley aged 7, Charles aged 4, and Mark aged 2. When they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, conference was under way. Their travels included the usual hardships across the plains - deaths amongst the saints, herds of buffalo, and meetings with the Indians.

Upon their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, they traveled to and lived in Kaysville for about two months; then moved south and established themselves in the settlement of Pleasant Grove, Utah County.

The following spring Shadrach, with his young son Ben, went up on the face of the Bald Mountain just under Mount Timpanogas to get some hard wood with which to make single-trees and other parts of wagons. In working in a grove of maples he decided that these mountain maple might yield sugar. And with his son's help he tapped a number of the trees. Some sap came and this boiled down yielded about two pounds of maple sugar; believed to be the first sugar produced in the state. The trail down which they dragged their mountain maple and oak has ever since been called Driggs Drag Road.

In 1855 Benjamin went to California with his uncle Starling Driggs, one of the original pioneers of 1847. Here in the San Bernardino country as a young man he worked among the Mormon colonies for two years.

In December 1856 he responded to a call made by President Brigham Young for volunteers to help the belated snow-bound handcart and independent companies into the valley.

It was the month of February in the year 1857 that he married Olivia Pratt, eldest daughter of Parley P. Pratt. The marriage ceremony being performed by Elder Orson Hyde in the Endowment House.

To this union were born twelve children: Benjamin Woodbury Jr., Ella, Luna Belle, Don Carlos, Florence, Parley Shadrach, Leland, Beatrice, Grace, Alice, Rintha, and William King.

Olivia Pratt Driggs

Benjamin Woodbury Driggs

Shortly after his marriage he took part in the Johnston Army episode serving in the company of Captain Willis as cavalryman during the fall and winter near Fort Bridger. On one occasion he acted as guide for Captain Lot Smith in a foray down Green River.

During the early sixties he engaged in blacksmithing and trading with emigrants on Hams Fork and South Pass. When the Black Hawk War broke out Benjamin was made a major in the militia and was sent with General Pace's command into San Pete County, Utah. He served in the capacity for two years. Also under command of Generals Burton and Wells in this war with the Indians.

The Black Hawk War

by John A. Peterson, Utah History Encyclopedia

The Black Hawk Indian War was the longest and most destructive conflict between pioneer immigrants and Native Americans in Utah History. The traditional date of the war's commencement is 9 April 1865 but tensions had been mounting for years. On that date bad feelings were transformed into violence when a handful of Utes and Mormon frontiersmen met in Manti, Sanpete County, to settle a dispute over some cattle killed and consumed by starving Indians. An irritated (and apparently inebriated) Mormon lost his temper and violently jerked a young chieftain from his horse. The insulted Indian delegation, which included a dynamic young Ute named Black Hawk, abruptly left, promising retaliation. The threats were not idle - for over the course of the next few days Black Hawk and other Utes killed five Mormons and escaped to the mountains with hundreds of stolen cattle. Naturally, scores of hungry warriors and their families flocked to eat "Mormon beef" and to support Black Hawk, who was suddenly hailed as a war chief.

Encouraged by his success and increasing power, Black Hawk continued his forays, stealing more than two thousand head of stock and killing approximately twenty-five more whites that year. The young Ute by no means had the support of all of the Indians of Utah, but he succeeded in uniting factions of the Ute, Paiute, and Navajo tribes into a very loose confederacy bent on plundering Mormons throughout the territory. Cattle were the main objectives of Black Hawk's offensives but travelers, herdsmen, and settlers were massacred when it was convenient. Contemporary estimates indicate that as many as seventy whites were killed during the conflict.

The years 1865 to 1867 were by far the most intense of the conflict. Latter-day Saints considered themselves in a state of open warfare. They built scores of forts and deserted dozens of settlements while hundreds of Mormon militiamen chased their illusive adversaries through the wilderness with little success. Requests for federal troops went unheeded for eight years. Unable to distinguish "guilty" from "friendly" tribesmen, frustrated Mormons at times indiscriminately killed Indians, including women and children.

In the fall of 1867 Black Hawk made peace with the Mormons. Without his leadership the Indian forces, which never operated as a combined front, fragmented even further. The war's intensity decreased and a treaty of peace was signed in 1868. Intermittent raiding and killing, however, continued until 1872 when 200 federal troops were finally ordered to step in.

The Black Hawk War erupted as a result of the pressures white expansion brought to Native American populations. White settlement of Utah altered crucial ecosystems and helped destroy Indian subsistence patterns which caused starvation. Those who did not starve often succumbed to European diseases. Contemporary sources indicate that Indian populations in Utah in the 1860s were plummeting at frightening rates. White efforts to establish reservations contributed additional pressures.

These conditions were almost universal among western Indians during the period, and in this sense the war can be viewed as an expression of the general Indian unrest and warfare that dominated the trans-Mississippi West during the 1860s. Similar conflicts also occurred during the decade between Indians and non-Mormon settlers in each of Utah's neighboring territories. These confrontations, however, were quickly (and brutally) put down by federal troops; however, the mounting crusade against polygamy and lingering "Utah War" mentalities made the situation different in Utah. The Black Hawk War was unique among the era's western Indian wars in that the antipathy that existed between the United States government and the LDS Church provided Utah's natives with the opportunity to pursue their hostile activities for an extended period of time without incurring the swift and destructive military reprisals suffered by other groups. Not surprisingly, the war ended almost without incident when federal troops were finally ordered to engage the Indians in 1872.

On October 5, 1867 Benjamin married Rosalia Ellen Cox of Manti in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. To this union the following children were born: Frank Milton, Howard Roscoe, Ida Lenora, Maud Rosalie, Clarice Lillia, Claire Lucille, Geneva Pearl, Burton Wells, and Ralph Emerson.

Rosalia Ellen Cox Driggs

During the year of 1869 Benjamin helped to build the Union Pacific railroad, having taken a grading contract in Echo Canyon. He also kept a little store of merchandise next to his house in Battle Creek, later named Pleasant Grove.

In 1870 he left his home and loved ones for a mission to England. While there he became president of the Birmingham Conference. After his mission he returned home and again engaged in the mercantile business. He moved his store to a large two story adobe building on the southeast oomer of Main Street. It was called The Battle Creek Co-op. He also established a merchantile business at West Jordan when the first smelters were in operation in that vicinity.

Benjamin was a merchant during the rest of his active life. Always genial and hospitable, he made many friends. His appreciation of people was very marked. He was generous to a fault and honest in all his dealings. He often remarked, "I gave her more than she asked for at the store. I couldn't rob a widow woman."

He excelled as a newspaper correspondent; writing for the Deseret News and Salt Lake Herald. Besides writing bits of interesting news, he promptly reported the death of a fellow citizen with a detailed history of the deceased.

He also kept his large family constantly informed through letters, especially in the times of illness. He was very considerate and sympathetic of his family and neighbors . It was through his suggestion in earlier years after a visit from C. R. Savage of Salt Lake City that Old Folks Day was begun in Pleasant Grove. This honorable movement has continued to this day.

After Benjamin returned from his mission to England in 1872 he served as one of the seven presidents of the forty-fourth quorum of seventies in Pleasant Grove, later being ordained High Priest. He responded to every call made upon him and was ever faithful to his religion and staunch in the gospel always. For love of it he sacrificed much, having embraced the principal of plural marriage. Under the enforcement of the Edmunds -Tucker law he served three months in the Territorial Penitentiary, from April 10, 1891 to July 20, 1891.

His life was spent largely in the "out of doors" traveling from one state and county to another. He loved horses and always kept one or two fine teams. One was an Arabian pair, brothers named Joe and Sheridan. They ware easily distinguished by a large white star in their foreheads. These black beauties were the favorites of the family.

On the 12th day of June, 1906, Olivia Pratt Driggs, the wife of his youth, died at the age of 65 years in their old home at Pleasant Grove.

During the summer of 1908, Benjamin, in company with his brother-in-law, F. Walter Cox of Manti, Utah, his son, Professor Howard R. Driggs, and his son-in-law, Dr. John Z. Brown, visited Nauvoo, Illinois. He went back to the scenes of his boyhood after an absence of sixty-two years. Benjamin located his father's home where the large wagon shop stood. He found the home of his grandfather Urial Driggs, which is still standing in Nauvoo.

The interesting spots on Mulholland Street were pointed out by him to his companions. This was the Main Street ofNauvoo. While he was showing the travelers the Temple site, the Nauvoo Mansion, and Nauvoo house he related interesting accounts of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph and Patriarch Hyrum Smith as well as the departure of the saints from Nauvoo in 1846.

At Mt. Pisgah, Iowa, where the family of Benjamin’s father tarried for awhile, he located important landmarks he remembered from boyhood. He explained that when his grandfather, Urial Driggs, died on the journey in Iowa his father, Shadrach, buried him in a coffin that he had hewn from a large tree in the forest.

Benjamin related that on their way westward this Driggs family spent five years on the Big Pigeon Creek, fifteen miles north of Council Bluffs, Iowa. It was here that Shadrach made five wagons for Elder Orson Hyde.

At the Big Pigeon he met a friend of 65 years ago. This man, a Mr. Baron, belonged to a Mormon family that did not come to Utah. This journey back to Nauvoo after all those years was the outstanding event of his life.

Of Benjamin it may be said that his was a life of untiring activity. He worked incessantly until the time of his last illness. He was known as a public spirited man and was a true and devoted husband and father, never failing to perform.

Transcribed, edited, and expanded by Ruth H. Barker, submitted 2010.