Tabitha H Ricks (Hendricks)

By Ruth Ricks Brown I need to tell you of your Grandmother Tabitha Hendricks Ricks — first wife of Leader Thomas E. Ricks, colonizer of the Rexburg, Idaho area more than 100 years ago. Many of Tabitha's grandchildren have written about her — dear girl that she was, determined for independence, orphaned as a teenager, drove an ox and cow across the plains in 1851. Yearned for learning, enjoying school, and loved others motivated. She met Thomas E. Ricks in the same company while journeying to a better and more peaceful existence. She loved to dance and had experience cording, weaving, and sewing clothing. She worked for her board and room milking cows and helping her employers while she attended school. She cooked, gardened, canned, preserved food. While living in Logan before going to Rexburg with her husband, her homemaking skills were considerable with 10 sons and two daughters to train, teach, care for, and assist her in being the hostess for general authorities who stopped over for rest as they journeyed north to visit colonies throughout Utah and Idaho, later Wyoming and Montana. Many are the stories of her response to the needs of her neighbors' predicaments as they found themselves between homes, short of enough food and clothing to tide them over. Her hands were busy at all times. During afternoons and evenings her steel knitting needles could be heard clicking away on a project resulting in socks, sweaters, scarves, hoods, hats, etc., and lace for adorning the Sunday attire. The above is not my story nor was I there to see her enjoy community dancing and socials, weddings, and celebrations gave Tabitha chance to make many friends in many walks of life. She loved to read and loved to tell stories and this is my remembrance of her. She was 90 years old — I was 4-5--when she spent a spring, summer, and fall with us around 1924-25. Not winter since we had an outside toilet and some of her children to the south of us had inside plumbing. In her mind not so much for her convenience as for those who had to help care for her. One day after Grandmother had been showing some scraps of velvet and gabardine from which she had sewn dresses, shirts, and suits, she asked me to hand her a cane she used to steady her and to accompany her outside while she went to our outside toilet accommodations, which I did. I remember pushing hard on the back door against the spring wind, walking the short path with her and helping her push open the toilet door, standing a way off to walk back with her. When she appeared in the doorway I helped push it back so it wouldn't tip her over. She was frail. To me she seemed terribly frail--until halfway to the house a gust of wind tore off her hat and sent it hurling to the ground. I remember diving for it. I also remember that before I got to it she had poked her cane on it and leaned there until I could retrieve it. I have a warm happy feeling in my heart as I remember and see with an inner admiration a new dimension of Grandmother's strength, aptness, coordination, instinct for appropriate response. All throughout my life as I've heard of my dear little Grandmother, of her initiative, flexibility, resilience in times of hardship and deprivation, I also add another adjective and expletive to her in my heart, a joyful response to happenings here and now. My grandmother later in another son's home fell and broke her leg and did not recover from the greatest hardship of all, that of immobility and the need for rest. I was not taken to her funeral and reacted with great sorrow — unappreciated or understood by the elders of my family, who saw this occurrence in a completely different light than I. My grandmother colored my view of the blessings aging family members can be in the lives of the very young — would you consider a small girl 4 1/2 years old?