Biographies Michigan Biographies Project |
Our subject was one of twelve children born to his parents, four of whom are still living: Catherine, James, Elizabeth Whitely and Richard. During the years when our subject would ordinarily have been acquiring his education, he was deprived of this advantage, because there was no schoolhouse within five miles of his father's house at the time. Such knowledge as he acquired has been gleamed from books, observation and experience. When seventeen years of age he began working by the day, and continued to do so until he was twenty-two years of age.
Richard T. Briggs was married February 21, 1854, to Miss Orilla, daughter of Levi and Anroid (Valentine) Hunt, residents of Birmingham, Oakland county, Michigan. Her father was born January 18, 1802, and in early life served as a sailor, but later engaged in the dry goods gusiness also the grocery trade, which he managed for a time and later "kept tavern" at Argentine. After a time he disposed of his property there and moved to Ionia, here he managed a hotel for a time. From Ionia he moved his family to Lansing and engaged in the meat market trade. After a time Mr. Hunt sold his market and moved to a farm in Leroy and from there to Flint, where he engaged in the hotel business. He was the for four or five years when he returned to Leroy, where he spent the remainder of his life with his children, and died January 13, 1884. The mother died October 13, 1881. Mr. Hunt was an old Jacksonian Democrat. For some time he anchored his faith to the Universalist doctrine, but later joined the Catholic church, and was buried in the Catholic cemetery at Williamston.
Mr. and Mrs. Briggs first settled in Locke township, where he bought fifty acres of wild land, there never having been an axe laid to a tree, and but one road, but Mr. Briggs was equal to the emergency. He begain in earnest to make for himself and family a home; after years of hard labor, practising economy and with his frugal helpmate's assistance, they were out of the woods. Today he is happy in the possession of ninety-six acres of well improved land.
He is a Democrat all the year around, never having voted any other ticket. In his religious views he is liberal, as he terms it, a free thinker.
Mr. and Mrs. Briggs have had born to them six children, four of who are living: Edwin, married Elva Davis; Minnie, married John Davidson, deceased; Annie, married J. Nowlen, deceased; Nora, married Frank Maxwell; Richard, married Rose Jasper, Myrtle, married Daniel Rice.
Mr. Briggs has never held office and never desired to or had ambition in that direction. He belongs to the Patrons of Industry, in which he has taken a lively interest, believing in the doctrines of the order.
Our subject's father was the eldest member of the Masonic order at Lansing. He was an American soldier in the War of 1812.
Mr. Briggs takes a commendable degree of pride in the fact that a portrait of himself representing an early Michigan pioneer, has been on exhibition at the St. Louis Exposition. Subject and his father built the first frame house every built in Lansing. Mrs. Briggs father built the first tavern in Lansing.
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Biographies Michigan Biographies Project |
 Sondra Higbee
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