Lewis James Petty Sr.

Lewis James Petty was born January 11, 1846 to Robert and Margaret Wells Petty in Nashville, Tennessee. He crossed the American plains at the age of 11.

After the passing of his father, Lewis James went with his mother to live in Richmond in 1859. He later moved to Oxford, Idaho.

Work

Lewis James was a timber worker, stone dresser, farmer, railroad contractor, and did some freighting between the years of 1866 - 1877. One experience he tells, "We crossed the Snake River on the ice with heavily loaded wagons March 15, 1866. At that time we bought flour in Richmond at $15 a sack, freighted it to Virginia City, Montana at a cost of $12.50 per sack, expecting to sell it in Virginia city for $120 a sack. But before we arrived there with our shipment another had been received from Fort Bent on an the price had dropped to $18 a sack."1

Marriage and Impressions

Lewis James first married Alvira L. Hendricks on Feb 8, 1870 in Salt Lake city. On May 10, 1892, Alvira passed away. On Dec 16, 1903, Lewis James married Rosa Belle Pace Fisher, a widow with 9 children, and they together had one child, a son named Harold Petty.

His daughter writes about Lewis James, "Lewis James Petty was deprived of a formal education. The only books he ever took into the schoolroom were a reader and spelling book. But he was well educated in the School of Experience. His was a life of hard work in the timber business, freighting, and on the farm. He had many thrilling experiences with the [Native Americans] in the early days in Utah. He never used liquor or tobacco. He retained his strong testimony of the Gospel his entire life."2

Epilogue