Only five of Richard and Priscilla’s eleven children lived to marry. They lost three or possibly four infant children, plus William at age 9, and Hannah at age 18. Though they married young, they only had 25 years together. Both Richard and Priscilla died young. Priscilla was only 42, when she died of complications of childbirth on September 21, 1842. She was buried four days later on September 25, 1842. Richard died of intemperance at his mother’s home on December 8, 1848.

It may be that it was only after Priscilla’s death that Richard began to have a serious drinking problem. A year after Priscilla died he lost his father to gangrene of his leg. Was it after his father’s death that he went to live with his mother, seeking comfort?

When I began to write the history of Richard and Priscilla there seemed only bits of information and no clear picture of their lives. As I collected information from different sources and meditated and prayed that I would give correct information and tried to make them a human family and not just statistics, personalities began to emerge and they became people with strengths and weaknesses. To me they became real people with problems and adversities, but with a strong love that bound them together as a family.

I visualized Richard as a young boy full of mischief, who enjoyed a challenge and who, somewhat like David of old, went to meet the challenge with a few pebbles and sling. Perhaps he was a little immature in that he did not weigh the cost of his daring actions. He married before he reached maturity. He was perhaps moved more by his emotions and love, as most teenagers are, than by the responsibility of marriage.

I feel that a loving, tender-hearted man emerged. Even if he drank, there was not a complaint or whisper of abuse or cruelty. He was there to give his daughter comfort in her dying hour. He was at Priscilla’s side when she was suffering severe spasms. I picture him holding her in his arms to try to quiet and comfort her. I can see his sorrow at the dividing of his family after her death. Depressed and lonely, he sought forgetfulness in drinking.

As I visualized Priscilla, I saw her as a quiet girl who also gave stability to the family. I feel to weep for her as she gave birth to precious infants, but was left with empty arms. I feel her heartache as she watched her only surviving daughter develop the dreaded and fatal disease of consumption.