Riddel's & Relatives Genealogy

May be Hariett.
Merged General Note:
8 of her ten children from the first marriage, besides 7 or 8 of her
13 step-children lived with them.

By Paul Miller:
See John Allan Miller letter, Aug. 8, 1908. In his discussion of brother Richard, John Allan Miller says, "Mother was left with all of us eight children, almost destitute. She had 100 acres of dense forest, a few acres cleared, a small log house, and a good frame barn. I think the barn was and remains a building 26 x 36 and sixteen feet high. The land was covered with a heavy growth of hardwood timber. The soil was exceedingly poor; it would only produce two crops of grain then it had to be seeded to grass, which it would produce for a few years and then it was entirely exhausted. Each year we had to fell a few acres, as much as we able to clear, and so on as long as we lived there. When mother went on this place George was fifteen and Leonard a nursing babe. All of us to be fed and clothed. How she ever did it has always been a mystery to me. I think we had enough to eat always. Our clothing Mother literally took from the sheep's back and fashioned into our garments. George soon became of age and started for himself, thus Colin was to the fore. Then I remember we fared pretty well but when he left and Abner was the head of the family we were up against it sure enough. He was rather, we will say erratic. Everything went to the dogs. Mother had to expel him. That left Richard the oldest at home. He was about fourteen, John about eleven, and Leonard about nine. Us three kids just had to wrest a living out of that wilderness and we did and did it well. I remember after the first year we had plenty, even a surplus. We had things to sell. The third year we had our barn full to the rafters and plenty of meat and vegetables. Then Mother married her second husband, Tristrem (?) Hillman. Richard then left home and worked in the lumber woods. The winter of '47 and 8 he boarded at Abraham Schriver's and went to school. Later on when he was nineteen he married Esther Schriver and moved to Wisc. in 1850 or 1851.He got some land and built a house and Esther and I passed the winter in it. I was with them about six months and became very attached to Esther. My recollections of her are all pleasant. I never saw Richard after March, 1852, when I went to California."

Note: When George was fifteen, Leonard was not yet born if he was born in 1835. If Leonard was born in 1835 and was a nursing babe when Harriot was left with the family, Isaac must have died about 1837 and George would have been about twenty years old. Richard was fourteen and John was eleven in 1843.

John Allan Miller says of his mother: "Her first husband had 13 children and for about 17 years she was a mother to them and she always spoke lovingly of them all. Then for perhaps 20 years she was father and mother to her own ten. Then for more than ten (or two?) years she cared for her second husbands eight children and then later on she was grandmother to her grandchildren whose name was legion."

It is not difficult to read between the lines to see the demands made of her and she met them as a good mother should and faithfully doing her duty to them all. Few women ever did or ever could have performed a task of this magnitude.(Paul Miller)