Person:Philip Riggs (1)

Phillip Riggs was born in Western Pennsylvania, 1744. He was a farmer and married Polly Pierce, who was the mother of all his children. He removed to Benton Centre, Yates County, N. Y., 1795. After his settlement there he lost his wife and married again: he lost the second also and married again; and again and again, until he had lost and buried five wives. This remarkable succession of family misfortunes and the prompt effort to restore the losses gave Philip the sobriquet of “The Widower from Pennslvania.” In 1821 he passed away himself in his seventy-seventh year, and was buried by the side of his wives. Local history speaks of the four sons and five daughters as “noted for their intelligence and popularity in Yates County.” For these nine children we have neither order nor dates, but we can safely place them in the last quarter of that century. Like many others of their immediate kindred, this family seems to have been prominent in the Baptist faith.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} John H. Wallace, Genealogy of the Riggs Family (1901, New York).
2.   GEDCOM file submitted by Lora Fleming, wolfspiritgenealogy@hotmail.com. Created on 2 SEP 2006. Imported on 19 May 2007..