Biography of Ricy Davis Jones
by Ricy's daughter, Sarah Jane Victor, Jan. 1957
Ricy Davis Jones was born 18 October 1828 in Abergorlech, Camarthenshire, South Wales. He
was the youngest boy of eight children born to John and Hettie Davis Jones. The oldest son,
Evan, was born in 1819. The five sisters were Margaret born in 1816, Jane born in 1824, Ann
born in 1826, Sarah (called Sally) born in 1838, and Hetty born in 1839. Ricy's brother John was
born 3 April 1821. Ann's oldest child was Hetty and her other daughter was Jane (the singer)
who took the prize for singing in London for many years. (I will mention her later in a topic from
the book).
Childhood
Ricy often talked of his father's farm, called the "Maesybidie Farm," back in 1715 called the
"Holy Bush" with a high hazelnut hedge around it, meadow land and trees and he spoke of the
English fox hunts with their dogs and red-coated riders who always went through the farm and
over their high hedges. He often spoke of the "Fair" where his father would take the prize year
after year for Best Athlete; he said his father was built like him-broad shoulders, straight and
much taller. He often spoke of his French grandmother whom he visited as a child. She would
give him nice presents and called him her favorite grandson. Ricy was named for his grandfather
(her husband), and from the book I got their names and birth dates.
His grandmother was Janet Rosser, a French sea captain's daughter, who had a 1000 Lb Title
dating back seven hundred years; do not have her birth date, but her husband was Ricy Jones'
father's grandfather, born in 1745 and died in 1810. He was connected with the courts, and had
but the one son, Ricy's father, John Jones. This grandfather's father, whose name was also John
Jones, was born in 1715 and died in 1775. It was when he owned the farm that it was called the
"Holy Bush." They must have been gentlemen farmers, as they were well-to-do. The farm was
owned by the Jones family for at least five generations and the farmhouse was one of the oldest
"longhouses" in Wales, being 400+ years old.
Ricy told many times how he learned to swim. When a little boy around four, he was playing
alone near a pond on the farm and one of his father's goats came along and bunted him head first
into the pond. It was too deep for him to walk out, so he must have swam. Every time he would
crawl up on the bank, the old buck would bunt him back into the pond until his mother heard him
screaming and came to find him. When RH was there, they showed him the pond and told him
the same story that Ricy had told us.
When he was a young man of 17, the Mormon missionaries came into their neighborhood
preaching a new kind of religion, about a God with body, parts, and passions. He was very
impressed with what it offered, especially when he realized the shortage of opportunities for a
farmer in Wales, where traditionally the oldest son usually inherits his father's farm. Land was
scarce. America with its new frontiers seemed to offer many more opportunities, although
challenging and adventuresome.
I cannot remember him ever speaking of work he did. He spoke of school and activities in
community work. he was the choir leader in his church and taught dancing in a dancing school. I
think his church was the Baptist and, from what was written about the crowds that gathered when
they heard that "Ricy Jones" was there, he had many friends. One of the sad things-he always felt
bad about his mother. The folks there said he had broken his mother's heart by coming to
America. She sent his brother John to try to bring him back, and he stayed in America, went to
Stockton, California and married there. His wife was Elizabeth Phillips. They had one son named
John, who died when a young man, and four daughters. One daughter married a Mr. Fife from
Ogden.
Ricy was baptized by David Jeremy on 7 March 1846, and left with the Saints two years later in
March 1849. He rode a horse to Swansea, sailed to Liverpool on the ship Troubador; and from
there on the ship Buena Vista for America. The voyage required 54 days and was made during
the reign of the plague. There were numerous deaths on board. He escaped at sea, but was
stricken with the disease coming up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Council Bluffs, but
recovered through his faith, which was always great. I've heard him say how he fasted and
prayed and did not touch water without boiling it, and every fall in October during the rest of his
life he had that same sickness. It would last for several weeks.
He reached Utah in October 1849, and shared with the Saints in the privations and sufferings of
those first years, subsisting almost entirely on roots and segos during the winters of '49 and '50. I
remember him telling about the first bread he had. He carried a bushel, or a sack, of wheat ten
miles to have it made into coarse flour.
While crossing the plains, he was one of the scouts. He would take turns on guard at night,
walking around the circle of wagons. Indians would crawl through the tall grass so quietly they
could not hear or see them until they were upon them. The most worried night on the plains, he
said, was when a panther stalked him all one night. He would turn to meet it, but it would hide
and get behind him every time. But he and one of the other scouts got it when daylight came.
He often wondered how he had so much strength after the bad sickness. In crossing the big
rivers, they would have him swim across to fasten a rope or chain to a tree or stake. Then he
would swim back to help the ones would could not swim or would lose their hold on the rope
where the water was swift. He said many times he had to knock them out or go down with them
when they would get a death grip around his neck and try to climb on his head.
In the Indian War, he was a Sergeant in Captain Callister's Company, Colonel Smith's Regiment,
Nauvoo Legion of Utah Volunteers, for which services he was a pensioner. He was a minute man
for President Brigham Young and was on call at all hours. He helped to build the narrow gauge
railroad tracks into Granite Canyon, and helped to get the granite blocks for the Salt Lake
Temple. He told in detail how they did it and how long it took to move and place each stone, but
all I can remember is that it seemed almost impossible to accomplish the things they did. For
those years of work on the Temple, he was given the farm in the East Field in Wellsville. That
was the main reason he left his home and farm in Brigham City in 1863 and moved to Wellsville.
He also had another small farm he called the North Field, due north from town.
In July 1854 he marred Ann Howell; but before they married, he built a two room adobe house
on his lot, situated where the D&RG Railroad Depot is, at 300 South, 440 West in Salt Lake City
and they just got settled in it when President Young called him to work on the State House in
Fillmore. He answered the call, but Ann did not want to go down there, so he sold the house and
she went and stayed with her mother who had moved to Brigham City. They finished only one
wing of the State House in Fillmore. It was built in the center of a ten acre block in the center of
Fillmore. It is an imposing building. It's walls are built of massive sandstone blocks. We stopped
overnight in Fillmore in 1919. The Territorial Legislature held one session in it's new Capitol
Building in 1856, then was transferred to Salt Lake.
When Ricy returned to Brigham City in 1856, he bought a farm in "String Town" north of
Brigham. They lived in a dugout while he was building a brick house. Their first four children
were born there, Ricy, Will, Martha Ann, and Esdras. While they lived there, Ann's mother went
to England to get an inheritance from royalties that had belonged to her husband, William
Howell, who died while coming to America. The year she was away, Reece, Lewis, and Joseph,
her three sons, stayed with Ricy and Ann. As payment she brought Ricy a new wagon from
England to freight with. When RH grew up and returned to Brigham, he bought the farm and
house Ricy built because it was his birth place. He said later, he sold it to Dave and Alice and
after Dave died, BH looked after it until Alice died. Then young Dave had it, and before he died,
he (Dave Rosenbaum) promised to get a picture of it, but never got it.
It would be over a hundred years old now. The last time I saw it, the southwest corner was
crumbling off. I would still like a picture of it for my Book of Memories. Ricy also built the
house in Wellsville. It was a very well built, comfortable home, three large rooms with a long
porch across the front painted green, two nice fireplaces, one on the north end of the house and
one on the south, a large cellar by the back door and an old-fashioned well. I remember each kind
of apple, plum, and prune tree, behind the orchard, a granary and stable and then a long shed and
corral. Then on the east of that was a patch of alfalfa. To the south was a garden and a nice path
through it to Howell's rock house, and a willow fence that was mashed down so one could walk
over it. It realize this is not what you want to talk about, but memories keep flooding in.
In 1872 William Maughan, a Mayor and former LDS Bishop of Wellsville, gave a Townsite
Deed for the Stone House and property across the street from the Town Square, to Martha
Howell, Ann's mother, and later gave his daughter Mary in marriage to Martha's son Joseph.
This 100-year-old house still stands (1979) as a monument, proclaiming its architectural and
Historical significance. A marker erected outside places it on the National Register of Historical
Places by the Heritage, Conservation and Recreation Service. This home's official designation,
the Howell-Thurer House, built in 1869, was chosen because it is one of a circle of structures that
surround the town square, facing the city's most famous historic landmark, the Wellsville LDS
Tabernacle, being the first to receive the national honor in Wellsville, Cache Valley's oldest
town. In 1878 Martha deeded the Stone House at 30 South, 100 East to her son Joseph, Ann's
brother. Three years before Joseph's death, he sold it to the Theurer's.
Features of the home typify the symmetry and economy of pioneer rock homes. It has 22-inch
stone walls on the first floor, 11 inches on the second floor, and its rafters are held together with
round wooden pegs instead of nails. It's two original stone fireplaces are intact, though one of the
hearths has been altered.
Ricy always paid his tithing. The tenth sack of wheat was always set aside at threshing time and
was never put in the bin, and the tenth load of hay was not unloaded at home. Ricy farmed in the
summer and freighted in the winter until we moved to the farm in 1888. We lived in the rock
house while Ricy built the house on the farm. Joseph Howell gave him $1,000 for the lot and
built a brick store. It was the nicest store that was ever in Wellsville. It think he bought the first
ten acres of the Hawbush Farm (alfalfa patch) about 1870 and the rest of the 160 later on. Ricy
took the necessary oath of his intentions to become a citizen of the U.S. in October 1854 and
received the certificate in October 1887. It took them many years to come up with that certificate.
In October 1868, he married Margaret Morse.
Ricy died at age 80 and his mother at 85.
As I travel down the lanes of memories, there doesn't even seem to be a bend, or turn, in that
long road. Those good old Pioneers had so much that we do not have today. They seemed to be
able to meet any problem that came up. When I was a girl, I thought we were poor folks, and I
continued to think so until after World War I. We made good money during those years, but so
many farmers here lost their farms and were just stranded here. They would come in and ask for
flour and coal. We owned the Rupert Seed and Milling Company at the time, and they would tell
Fred they had no money, no food, and no coal and they all got what they asked for and more.
That one winter, he gave coal by the ton and flour by the sack. After he retired and was home all
day, he often said, "Saidee, the bread we cast on the water has been returned us a thousand fold,"
and he was right.
That was when I realized that we at home had never been poor. I can never remember a time
when we could not go down to that old granary and dig out a ham or shoulder, all cured and
good-out of the wheat bin, and I cannot remember a time when those two big flour bins were not
filled with flour. Every fall or winter that Ricy would or could not dig into a big pit that he had
dug in the fall, and under two or three feet of snow come up with a sack of potatoes, carrots,
beets, cabbage and winter apples, all just perfect. Or a time when the cellar did not hold jars and
jars of fruit and preserves, homemade butter, buttermilk, cottage cheese, and head cheese that
Margaret used to make from the pig's heads. And was it good!
Before we had the cellar on the farm, we had a big green cupboard with three deep shelves and
doors with white handles where the fruit was kept inside and on top, I do not know of any kind of
recreation Ricy had except reading. He always took the New York Times and Chicago Tribune,
weeklies, and the Salt Lake paper and he would read aloud evenings while Margaret would be
knitting wool stockings for us girls, usually with black or red stripes running around, or she
would be darning or patching and he always worked from sunup till dark. He was an early
riser-up at 5 a.m., and I should know! I was the gal who made the fires and got the breakfast.
Soon as he was dressed, he would open the door and call "Sadie Dane, time to get up." Then he
would get a pan of oats and go to the fence if the horses were in the pasture, and they would
come tearing.
Often in later years, he would stand in the doorway watching JM or Roy when they were kids
trying to catch a horse, chasing them all around the field, and he would go out and the horses
would come straight to him. Well, he would get his wagon hitched up. He would have breakfast,
take a lunch and be gone all day, unless he was hauling hay from the north field. Then he would
try to make two loads a day. We were all glad when he got rid of the north field. It was so far
away. But as I look back, I cannot remember ever hearing him complain about anything. When
he told us to do something, we did it now, and that was that. If there ever was a poor year for us,
it was when wheat was 50 cents per bushel and wheat was his main crop. Late that fall, he hauled
a wagon load of wheat heaped up, to Ogden and for all that wheat brought back a wagon load of
coal.
The next morning, he was up early as usual, hitched up, and told me to fix a big lunch, that he
may not get home until midnight. And when Margaret asked him where he was going, he said,
"To the mountains for wood." So he hauled wood from Black Smith Fork Canyon until winter
came. Then by spring, there was no wood or coal, and he started clearing the sagebrush from our
hill (the pasture). It was good that year-big as your arm and smelled good. When he started to dig
that deep ditch, or canal, south of the farm, everyone told him that it could not be done by one
man with a hand shovel, but he did it. I used to carry milk or buttermilk every hour for him and
he would be shoveling that heavy black soil up on the bank fir or six feet above his head and
there would not be a dry spot on his shirt.
Well, I will get out of this long lane of memories and if you cannot find something to talk about,
then I cannot help you. There are many more things I could tell about the trials he suffered, but I
will just say this: I have believed for many years what Charles W. Hyde tells him in the blessing
given him in 1871: "For no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper, for thou wilt be like
until Nephi of old." I will say this, that never in his lifetime was he given credit for the many
things he did for the church, but perhaps they who do not get credit for good deeds done in this
life will get it later on. I've asked several authorities why his name is not mentioned in the early
history of the church, and they say because he himself did not keep a record, and, being of a
retiring disposition, he did not push himself. But we are to blame for not getting the work done in
the Temple for his parents and grandparents. We would have to approximate the birth dates for
his one brother and most of his sisters, but it can be done.
