LYDIA
CLISBEE PARTRIDGE
Taken from the Edward
Partridge Family Association News Bulletin in August, 1955.
Lydia Clisbee (Partridge) is
a daughter of Joseph Clisbee and Miriam Howe; who is a son of Ezekiel Clisbee
and Hannah Lewis; who is a son of Ezekiel Clisbee and Abigail Frothingham; who
is the son of Ezekiel Clisbee and Sarah .
Lydia was born in Marlboro,
Middlesex County, Massachusetts, on September 20, 1793. They lived in eastern Massachusetts among
the great sugar maples and orchards in Pittsfield, Berkshire,
Massachusetts. It was a rural hamlet
with sheep and cows. Each man had his
own tobacco patch and Negroes to do the drudgery. While she was very young, the family moved to New Hampshire, her
mother dying when Lydia was about twenty-two years of age.
She and her sister Eliza went
to Ohio where she became acquainted with Edward Partridge, to whom she was
married in the year 1819.
They lived in Painesville,
Ohio for several years and became identified with a religious organization
effected by Sidney Rigdon, professing the doctrines taught by Alexander
Campbell. Both she and her husband were
baptized at Mentor by Sidney Rigdon, one of the leaders of that religious sect.
Her husband was a hatter by
trade and carried on quite a business in that line, and was in prosperous
circumstances when the gospel found them.
The first Mormon Elders who visited them were Parley P. Pratt, Oliver
Cowdery, Peter Whitmer and Ziba Peterson.
She was baptized by Parley P. Pratt in 1830, her husband joining the
church soon after.
On February 4, 1831, her
husband was called by revelation to be a Bishop in the church and to go to
Missouri and locate. The following
June, in company with others, he started for Missouri, and located in Independence,
Jackson County, Missouri. Lydia was
left in Ohio with the care of a sick family, and afterwards performed the
journey with her children to Missouri, which in those days, without the
protecting care of her husband, was no small undertaking. She had $500 in money when starting from
Painesville, Ohio, but it was thought unsafe for a woman to carry so much
money. Therefore she gave it into the
care of another person for safe keeping.
She never received one dollar of it back again.
Her husband was required to
devote his time to the duties of his office, and his property being used up or
sold for little or nothing, they were brought into straightened circumstances
and suffered in common with the rest of the saints, the hardships and
persecutions endured by them, which have become a matter of history.
To them were born the
following children: Eliza Maria, Emily Dow, Harriet Pamela, Caroline Ely,
Clisbee (who died in infancy), and Edward.
When the baby Edward was
born, as Lydia was beginning to sit up and move cautiously from her bed to the
chair, one night her husband was ruthlessly taken from the room by a mob and
taken to the public square nearby, where he was stripped of his clothing and
tarred and feathered. The rest of that
night Lydia and her daughters, with the help of the brethren was spent in
taking off the tar and feathers
and binding his wounds and
bleeding limbs. (In later years this
baby Edward, served in the Presidency of Millard Stake and later became
President of Utah Stake.)
When the saints were expelled
from Far West and Independence and fled to Clay County, Lydia and her family
resided there until the fall of 1836.
During the years 1833 and 1836 her husband filled a mission to the Eastern
States, leaving her with their children.
Lydia was again compelled to
make a journey without her husband, for during the winter of 1838-39, in
conformity with Governor Boggs exterminating order, having the care of six
children, she arrived in Quincy, Illinois, where they were well received by the
citizens of that place. Here she was
later joined by her husband after his release from prison in Ray County. They continued to dwell here until the
ensuing summer or fall.
After the purchase of lands
and the settlement of the Saints at Commerce (afterwards Nauvoo), her husband
was appointed a Bishop of one of the three Wards (the Upper Ward). The family moved to Nauvoo. The Saints were nearly all sick with fever
and ague and Lydia and Edward’s daughters, Lydia and Harriet, had the ague
about a year. Harriet died with it on
May 16, 1840, and her father was taken with pleurisy in his side and suffering
from the persecutions through which he had passed which weakened his body, he
passed away about ten days after the death of his daughter Harriet, on May 27,
1840.
Lydia was married to Father
William Huntington, whose wife had likewise died. To escape mob violence, they left Nauvoo with the first companies
in February 1846, crossing the river on the ice with their teams and wagons. At Mount Pisgah, Father Huntington was
appointed to preside over those who were left there to raise a crop, and come
on the next season, but he was taken sick and died on August 19, 1846.
In the spring of 1847, Lydia
and family were moved to Winter Quarters on the Mississippi River by teams sent
by President Brigham Young, and arrived in Salt Lake Valley with the Saints in
1848. She lived in Salt Lake City for
awhile with her daughter Emily Dow (who was married to Brigham Young), but
later moved to Oak City and Fillmore with her other children. Eliza Maria, Caroline and Lydia were married
to Amasa Mason Lyman.
Although their property was
sacrificed in becoming identified with the “Mormons” and her husband had
labored for the people and worn himself out in the cause, yet Lydia was always
loathe to ask for assistance, and labored diligently to support herself and
family, and was always found earning something.
She was exemplary in her
daily life, and never was known to be anything other than a true and faithful
Latter-Day Saint, and it was known she never had a personal enemy. In disposition she was quiet and unassuming,
and her good works were performed without boasting, but from an innate love of
the right, and the natural kindness of her heart.
She lived until she was nearly
eighty-five years of age and up to within a few days of her death was busy
constantly making quilt blocks, sewing carpet rags, braiding straw and making
hats. She was especially skilled in
making buckskin gloves and when they were taking up donations for the Manti
Temple, she donated seven pairs of home-made gloves, equivalent to about
fourteen dollars.
[From the journal of Lydia’s
eldest child, Eliza Maria Partridge Lyman, the following is copied]
“Sunday June 9, 1878--My dear
Mother breathed her last at ten minutes to seven in the evening. She slept the last four hours of her life
and passed away without a struggle. We
commenced immediately to prepare to take her to Fillmore as she requested us to
lay her beside her daughter Lydia who has been buried there over three
years. We succeeded in getting ready
and starting about two o’clock in the morning.
My son Platte and his brothers, Fred and Edward, and brother-in-law
Alvin Roper, doing what was to be done, our neighbors showing us no kindness at
all with the exception of brother John Lovell, who offered us the use of a
horse and wagon which we did not need . . . Sister Rebecca Dutson Jacobson was
the only woman who offered to assist us and she stayed with us till we started,
and then stayed with those who were left as they were very lonesome. Mother has suffered much pain during her
sickness which she has borne with patience.
She was never known to murmur in her afflictions, which have been many,
but her sufferings are over and I hope ere long to meet her where pain and
sorrow have no power over us, and parting from our friends in unknown.
We arrived in Fillmore at
about twelve o’clock noon and stopped at the house that I occupied. Found my brother Edward who had made the
necessary preparations for the funeral.
The brethren and sisters were very kind and seemed ready on every hand
to assist us, which was very different to the treatment we received at Oak
Creek. There they left us almost
entirely alone, never so much as offering to help us for one hour. We not only took care of our dear Mother
night and day for six weeks, but when she died we had to wash and dress her
ourselves as not a person offered their assistance. It was not a very agreeable task for us, her children, but I
thank the Lord for the strength he gave us to help us through so that our dear
Mother never suffered for the want of care.
June 10th--We arrived in
Fillmore about noon, and took dinner at Brother Callister’s. After an examination of the corpse, the
brethren and sisters concluded that the funeral might be put off till the next
day. We found very soon after dark that
we had made a mistake in putting it off, and had to go very early the next
morning to the grave, and there we left our Mother to sleep in peace to await
the morning of the first resurrection, when I have no doubt, she will come
forth in glory to reap the reward which she has earned in this life.”
The following paragraphs are
copied from a sketch sent to our Historian.
The sketch is too long to be copied in its entirety, but this portion of
it is very quaint:
IN
MEMORIAM
Lydia Partridge, widow of
Edward Partridge, died on the 9th of June at 7 p.m. at Oak City, Millard Co.,
and was buried at Fillmore on the 11th.
She was the daughter of Joseph Clisbee and Meriam Howe, and was born at
Marlboro, Middlesex County, Mass., on the 26th of Sept. 1793. Her mother dying when she was about
twenty-two years of age, the family was broken up, she with one brother and
sister went to Ohio, where she became acquainted with and was subsequently
married to Edward Partridge in the year 1819, who was a hatter by trade and
carried on quite a successful business at Painsville. They were believers in the doctrine taught by Alexander Campbell,
and were identified with an organization raised up by Sidney Rigdon; at that
time they were in prosperous circumstances.
She was baptized into the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
by Parley P. Pratt in 1830, and her husband being called by revelation to be a
Bishop and locate in Jackson County, Mo., Sister Partridge was left alone with
the care of a large family of small children, and afterward performed the
journey with her children, which, to her, in those days without protecting care
of her husband, was a heroic undertaking.
Edward Partridge and Lydia
Clisbee began record-keeping, research and Temple work in 1836. Five of their children came to Utah and
carried it on acceptably.
------------------------------
ABOUT
THE CLISBEE FAMILY
Of the ancient Anglo-Norman
family DeClisbe, we learn from the researches of John Fries, chronicler and
antiquarian of the Scottish Border, that this house was originally of the
Chateau DeClisbe, Val de Loire, Normandy.
In the suite of William the
Conqueror, three knights of the family--Richard, Robert, and John
DeClisbe--passed over to England, who, for distinguished valor in the battle of
Hastings, (October 14, 1066) were granted Crown lands up on the Scottish
Border, south of Berwick Demesne (Berwick).
These they (their descendants) still held in the time of Henry V, who,
at the battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415) one of the house, Lee Ira
DeClisbe, commanding the Northumberland Archers, two thousand in number, having
charged on and routed the left wing of the French army, was, at the close of
the battle, highly commended by King Henry in the presence of the assembled
Knights of the whole army. And the King
presented him with a shield of gold bearing the family’s ancient armorial
quarters, and a new motto - “Sans Peur” - in Norman French signifying “Without
Fear.”
In the time of Charles I
(1625) the family, by lopping the prefix “De” from their name, thenceforth was
Anglicized to “Clisbe.” This is also
borne in the deeds and charters of the Manor of Yeardly and Manor of Nechelle
Green granted them by Henry V. On these
estates they lived in opulence and high respect up to the time of the
Revolution in 1642, when Robert Clisbe was so severely wounded in a cavalry
charge upon a body of His Majesty’s horse (Probably the Battle of Edgehill,
October 23, 1642) that he died on the field.
On account of his
participation in this action, two of his sons and heir, Ira and John Clisbe,
were cited before a Military Commission in the Court of Brouwick, Warwickshire,
to take an oath of submission and allegiance to the King’s officers in the
Midland Counties.
This the two brothers
defiantly refused to do, averring that rather than submit to the arbitrary
dictum of a self-elected, unconstitutional Court, they would leave the country
for foreign lands forever. Being hence,
heavily mulcted in money and estates, they immediately took their departure
from the old Manor of Nechelle (or Machelle) Green, Warwickshire, and thence
from Bristol, England, accompanied by Henry Clinte, Knight of Warwick, and
several eminent yoeman families--neighbors--set sail for the Colonial Province
of York (New York).
This branch left at home at
the old Manor, an uncle named Ira Clisbe, noted for having brought over to
England while serving the Commonwealth as Consul at Tangier, Morocco, six
Thoroughbred Arabian stud horses, which, crossing the fine hunting stock of the
time, produced some of the fastest racers of the XVI and XVII centuries, and
from which blood has descended the racer Hamiltons and Lexingtons of Kentucky.
As the Grand Jury of
Warwickshire, subsequent to the emigration of the brothers, Ira and John, ordered a restitution of the fines
which had been imposed upon them for “Contumacy” in the Court of Brouwick, severely censuring that Court for its
arbitrary sentence and execution, the
Clisbes were granted lands by a Royal Commission upon what was called the York
Grant (1664) in the states of New York and Connecticut. This is described in an old manuscript found
by Anthony Barclay, of Barclay
St., New York, British Consul
General, among a number of old British Government papers entitled “Records of the Blood Stock-Colonial
Families.”
There is also another old
manuscript history of the family which proved that, more recently, a branch
settled in the state of Michigan. The
paper was handed to Colonel Clisbe of the Ordinance Department, Britain, many
years ago by a distinguished gentleman, General Cass, of Detroit, Michigan, and
those two documents, connecting the Clisbe family in America with that of that
ancient name in England were deposited in the archives of Ashton Hall, County
of Warwick, in the possession of Mr James Watt, Lord of the Manor of Ashton.
Copied
from a volume of New York History, “History of Mohawk Valley”
-----------------------
AN ABSTRACT OF CAROLINE ELY
PARTRIDGE’S HOME IN OAK CITY, UTAH
“A number of families had
moved on the Oak Creek in 1868, with the intention of making permanent homes,
so it was decided to get the land from the State Land Office for a “Townsite,”
and for their farm lands.
William Walker went to Salt
Lake City to the Land Office and filed on a quarter section, which was obtained
for a very few dollars for the townsite.
Instead of a Square Quarter Section as was planned, the town property
came in a Quarter Section four 40's long north and south. The lots were numbered and then were drawn,
a lot to a family. If a man had two
families or more, he drew a lot for each one.
Each family was given 30 acres or shares of water, and each grown single
young man was given 10
shares of water. Bishop
Platte Dalton Lyman was president of the Irrigation Company when the plan and
the distribution was made of the water.
George Finlinson was the Secretary and TREASURER.
The fields were drawn in the
same manner as the city lots. After
they had drawn their property, they had to go to Fillmore to the Probate Judge,
which was Uncle Marion Lyman at that time, and he gave the people their deeds for
a fee of $2.50 per lot.”