27th May 2025
One of the final tweaks that I applied to the text of the recently published The Line of Sixteen: Searching for my children’s great, great grandchildren was to insert footnote 20 in Chapter 1:
“Including spouses, the greatest age reached by a member of the extended Rigg family has been that of Harriet Elizabeth Wheatley Riggs, who was born in Rutland and died in Richmond (both in Vermont, USA). Aged 104 when she died in 2024, she was the wife of Heath Kenyon Riggs (1918-2011), a great (x2) grandson of George and Jane Rigg”.
George Rigg (1802-1865), who was born and died in Baldersby, North Yorkshire, is the furthest in my direct Rigg line whom I have been able to identify. The parish records for Topcliffe state that he was the first son of “Mary Rigg of Baldersby” and “an unknown father”. George and Jane’s oldest son was William Rigg (1829-1905) and it was two of William’s sons – Stephen and Henry – who migrated from Stockton-on-Tees to Vermont in the 1890s.
Heath Kenyon Riggs was a grandson of Henry (who had added an ‘s’ to his surname in the USA) and Amelia Heath (who had been born in Middlesbrough). His obituary in the Burlington Free Press in April 2011 described his impressive academic career. He graduated with a BS degree from the University of Vermont (UVM) in 1940 and followed this with a PhD. from the University of Chicago. He returned to UVM as Director of Admissions in 1943 and then from 1953, after another period in Chicago, he worked in the mathematics faculty for over 30 years and is credited with introducing the first computer to UVM in 1960. He died in Burlington, Vermont, at the age of 92.
Heath married Harriet Elizabeth Wheatley in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1943.
Harriet’s lengthy obituary in the Burlington Free Press in April 2024 has provided a rich description of her full and active life: “a gifted writer, gardener, cook [with] a passion for Vermont history, notably Richmond history”. Her own degree was a BS in Home Economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and she spent some time in the food industry. (Her entry in the 1950 US Federal Census records that she was a Home Economist in Chicago undertaking “research and education in breakfast cereals”).
Harriet’s local history interests included being a founding member of the Richmond Historical Society, the Richmond Town Historian and the author of Richmond VT, a History of More Than 200 Years (2007). She was also the first female Deacon of the Richmond Congregational Church. Her contribution to the local community was deservedly recognised in a declaration by the Richmond Vermont Selectboard (the town’s legislative body) on 3rd June 2019:
“Let it be resolved that June 4, 2019 be declared Harriet Wheatley Riggs Day in honor of Harriet’s 100th Birthday and her remarkable service to the Town of Richmond, VT”.
Harriet Elizabeth Wheatley Riggs is the first centurion that I have discovered during my extensive researches into the extended Rigg and English families. (There are several nonagenarians). Accordingly, it is salutary to think back to the month in which she was born – June 1919 – and reflect on the world as it then was.
Indeed, to the day on which she was born: 4th June 1919. The relevant page of Wikipedia records that this was also the day on which the United States Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution that would guarantee suffrage for women. That is quite a juxtaposition.
And other events that occurred during the month of June 1919? The Red Army made gains on the Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War, but lost ground to the White Volunteer Army on the Southern Front; John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew a Vickers Vimy on the first nonstop transatlantic flight from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, Ireland; Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttled the German fleet at Scapa Flow; the International Labour Organisation (ILO) was established as an agency of the League of Nations; and two British Foreign Office officials – TE Lawrence (of Arabia) and St John Philby (father of the Soviet spy Kim Philby) – arrived in Cairo for discussions about Arab unrest.
And also: the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28th June, formally ending World War I, five years to the day after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
Major events in our distant past, all of which occurred during the first four weeks in the life of Harriet Elizabeth Wheatley Riggs.
An Ordinary Spectator 