Ralph Partington
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Ralph Partington (March 16, 1806 – 1873) was a Mormon pioneer.
Partington was born in Skippool, near Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, England. He married Ann Taylor, who became one of the first English women to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when she was baptized in the River Ribble in 1837.[1] The pair emigrated to Nauvoo, Illinois, with their four children aboard the ship Swanton in 1843. Ann gave birth to a child, Joseph Hyrum, en route.
Partington and his wife came down with ague when they landed in Nauvoo,[2] which prevented them from working to support their family. Willard and Jeanetta Richards adopted their eight-year-old daughter Ellen to help ease the burden, and another neighbor took care of their newborn baby, who died soon afterward.
The couple eventually regained their health, and Ann gave birth to another child in 1845. Partington worked as a carpenter on the Nauvoo Temple, where Ellen was sealed to Willard Richards as his daughter.
The Partingtons were poor, and when in 1846 mobs forced the Mormons from their homes in Nauvoo, the family found itself across the river in Montrose, Iowa, with no provisions. Instead of crossing Iowa with the main body of Latter Day Saints (including their daughter Ellen and the Richards family), they ventured downriver to St. Louis in search of employment. Partington found work as a carpenter and was able to send good clothing and shoes to his daughter Ellen before she crossed the plains with the Richards family.[1] In St. Louis they had another baby, who died at 5 months. They stayed in the city until 1853, when they had saved enough money to trek west.
Ellen married in 1851, 3 months short of her seventeenth birthday, and by the time her family arrived in Salt Lake City, she had an 11-month-old baby.
