Margaret Iva Richards Cook>Wilford Woodruff Richards>Franklin Dewey Richards>Wealthy Dewey Richards
Wealthy and her family settled in Nauvoo, where they faced expulsion just a few years later. She spent a year living in a wagon as she crossed the dreary Iowa plains with family, grieving as children and daughters-in-law died along the way, including a three year old granddaughter named after her.
When the call was made for men to fight in the Mormon Battalion, her son, Joseph, was asked by his uncle, Willard, to go. He was too young to enlist so he joined as a drummer, even though he didn’t have adequate supplies. For several nights it rained as he slept on the ground without a tent. He became very sick and went with the sick detachment to Pueblo, Colorado. He died there and was buried on the banks of a river. His brother, Franklin, traveled to Pueblo years later to find his body, but it had been swept away by the flooding of the river.
When they finally made it to Salt Lake, she might have thought that times would get better, but her sons were often traveling, usually on missions for the church. On one of these missions to Europe one of her sons became extremely ill and Wealthy wondered if the Lord were going to take all of her sons, having lost four already.
After a long, full life of many trials and hardships, Wealthy passed away on 18 Oct 1853 in Salt Lake City at the age of 67, having sacrificed more than most for the gospel.
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