Lydia Partridge Bio

Lydia Partridge

LYDIA PARTRIDGE LYMAN was the sixth child of Edward Partridge and Lydia Clisbee.  She was born at Painesville, Ohio, 8 May 1830 just one month and two days after the organization of the Church.  Her early life was during the days of severe persecution of the members of the church.  She knew the privilege of believing and living the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  She gained a testimony in the early years that never wavered during all the days of her life, through persecution, privation, poverty, sickness, and the wear and tear of a pioneer woman raising a family as a polygamist wife.  She saw her kind and loving father dragged from his own home and family to be abused and falsely accused, finally to be tarred and feathered and rudely treated at the lands of the bitter enemies of the church. 

Her father died as the result of persecution and exposure when Lydia was ten years old,  leaving the family bereft, homeless and destitute.  She learned in these early years that the gospel was indeed a "pearl of great price." 

After the death of her father, Lydia's mother went into the home of Brother William Law, who took care of the family until the home which Edward Partridge had started for his family could be finished.  Brother Law and his family were very kind to the family and doctored Lydia who was very sick.  In about three weeks they were able to move into their own house.

Lydia moved about as a very young child as the family was driven with the saints from place to place, leaving dear familiar places and things, knowing that they would never see them again.

Lydia was 16 years of age when they left Nauvoo.  She and her younger brother Edward stayed with their mother and her husband.  They started across the plains and stopped awhile at    Mt. Pisgah, where her step‑father died.  The family stayed the better part of a year before they were able to go on to join the others of the family at Council Bluffs.  They stayed at Council Bluffs for more than a year before they started west. They left for the Salt Lake Valley in the summer of 1848, traveling in company with Amasa M. Lyman and his wives, Eliza and Caroline   Partridge Lyman, and a number of Saints. They had provisions enough to last a few months after they arrived in the valley but not enough to last until another harvest. Lydia Clisbee Partridge's wagon traveled next to Amasa Lyman's wagon. They reached the Salt Lake Valley October 17, 1848.

Lydia lived in Salt Lake City with her mother until, she married Amasa M. Lyman as his 8th wife, 7 February 1853.  She was twenty‑four and he was forty years of age. Lydia continued to live with her mother and some of the time with her sisters Caroline and Eliza who were also wives of Amasa M. Lyman.

Lydia and her family were moved to Fillmore, Millard County, Utah in about 1864 where Amasa was endeavoring to establish his families so that he could better care for and educate them.

Lydia and Amasa had four children.  Edward Leo, born 4 January 1857 at Salt Lake City; Ida Evelyn, born 28 March 1859 at Salt Lake City; Frank Arthur born 9 September 1863, died 26 April 1864; Lydia Mae born 1 May 1865 at Fillmore, Millard County, Utah.

While Lydia lived in Fillmore she provided for herself and family any way she honorably could.  She was a good seamstress and did much sewing.  She was an expert in working with buck skin, making moccasins and gloves which she sold.  Her son Edward used to go out on the cedar mountains north of Fillmore and set cedar stumps on fire which burning into the ground left charcoal which he would go back and get later to sell to the blacksmith for a meager sum.

The Partridge women stayed close together and helped each other. When Amasa left the church the Partridge women left him.  They moved to Oak City where their sons had property interests.  Their mother, Lydia Clisbee Partridge continued to live with them.

Lydia had been in poor health nearly all her life. As early as 1851 she had a siege of rheumatism, not being able to put her hand to her head or help herself.

When she was only forty‑four years of age she took sick, in such pain that she could not be touched and had to be moved on a sheet.  She was tenderly cared for by her son Edward who was eighteen and her daughter Ida Evelyn, who was sixteen and her sisters Caroline and Eliza. They would take turns sitting up with their mother during the night.  After sixteen weeks of painful illness, Lydia passed away on 16  January 1875.  She was buried in Fillmore, Utah, the only one of Amasa M. Lyman's eight wives to be buried by his side.

By Mary Lyman Henrie

SOURCE:  Amasa Mason Lyman Book, Vol. 1 ‑ Lyman Family History.