South to Richfield

The year of 1872 was a watershed year for the Ogden family.  It was time to make a hard decision about where to permanently put down roots.  They had been three years in Santaquin but decided it wasn’t the place for them.  The biggest factor in making such a decision was to be able to acquire good land; preferable by using sweat equity, for money was a very scarce commodity.  In November of 1869 WCB Orrock married Mary Jane Ogden in the endowment House and his sister Mary Elizabeth Orrock married Stephan Theobald, who was also an English emigrant.  In December 1871 Theobald came to the Ogden family with the idea of possibly relocating to Richfield Utah, some 100 miles south of where they were.

The Sevier River valley seemed an attractive possibility.  The valleys to the north such as Manti and Ephraim were solidly established, primary with Scandinavian saints.  Further south the communities of St. George and smaller settlements extending north from it were also doing well.   But the central area of the state, particularly the area of the Sevier River drainage had experienced difficulties.  Someone obviously forgot to tell the local Native Americans they were now going to have to share their land and resources with fair skinned Mormon pioneers.  Tensions heightened, cattle were stolen, and a young Indian brave newly name Blackhawk led the Indians and settlers into what we know call the Blackhawk War.

Settlers came to the Sevier Valley in 1864, built dugouts in the ground and struggled to survive.  By the time the Blackhawk War began there were somewhere near 100 people living in the town of Omni, which would be renamed Richfield a few years later.  In 1868, due to the dangers of Indian attacks, the inhabitants packed wagons and evacuated to Manti.  This left the community deserted until 1871 when negotiations with the Indians brought to an end, at least for the most part, the Blackhawk War.