Dick Leigh was the ninth child of Henry Leigh and Amy Elizabeth Webster Leigh. He was born on December 25, 1895, in the family home located at 220 W. 200 North, in Cedar City, and he was given the name of Wilford Webster Leigh, the Wilford being after Wilford Woodruff.

During his childhood his mother called him "Wiff" but the rest of the family called him "Billy". His school friends started calling him "Dick", and that name stuck with him for the remainder of his life. Dick looked like his mother more than he did the Leighs.

His father was fifty three years old and his mother was forty years old when Dick was born, and his three older brothers took him with them and helped take care of him. In addition, after school he would haul wood and do his chores. He thus learned at a young age to work hard. When Dick first started school, he had to miss the first few days because it was haying time and he had to tromp down the hay. He always felt his brothers had made him work too hard as a young boy and that if he ever had sons, he wouldn't work them so hard but would let them have fun along with the work.

In the summer, Dick and his friends would go into the field north of their home and play ball.

Dick's older sister, Winn, was a tomboy, and she and Dick would chase each other and romp in the house. Once, Winn had been teasing Dick, and he chased her until he caught her. He pinned her down, and he wouldn't let her go until she promised she wouldn't tease him anymore.

Dick met Anna Mae Langford when she worked in Pete's Drug Store on Main Street in Cedar City, and they began dating. Mae's mother, Laurena Dalley Langford, said she never worried about Mae when she was out with Dick. Mae and Dick were married on December 17, 1925 in Los Angeles, California, where Mae and her mother had gone for work. They returned to Cedar City and lived there for almost the rest of their lives.

This marriage joined two similar lines of Mormon pioneers. As already seen, the Leigh line was an early pioneer family that helped to found Cedar City in the high mountain desert of what became southern Utah. No Langfords were settled there, but that area was near the Nevada desert mining town of Panaca where Fielding Langford and his second wife settled in 1867-8, and in fact Panaca had then been part of the Utah Territory. Mae’s mother’s family, the Dalleys, were even more similar though they did not live in Cedar City, as did the Leighs. In 1853, a year after arriving in Salt Lake City from western England near the border with Wales, they helped found new settlements, one a small farming village named Summit for its location on a rise a few miles north east of Cedar City. Mae’s maternal great-grandfather, William Dalley, served in Summit as mayor as well as bishop for many years, and he performed the civil wedding ceremony for several of his own children.

Two of Mae’s other families were unlike these recent emigrants who “tamed the West” beginning their new lives in the newest parts of America. The origins of the Langfords and their spouse families of Bethurems, Warrens, and Kincaids are still unknown in part, but they were not newcomers, being documented in the well-established regions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky during the colonial and Pre-Revolutionary period before1776. Many fought in the Revolutionary War, then later in the Civil War on both sides. For details on the Langfords, see http://www.fieldinglangford.org

One spouse family was even earlier. Mandana Hillman was the wife of William Dalley and thus Mae Langford’s great-grandmother. The Hillmans were an old family in New England, where an early Hillman, Benjamin by name, was born in Massachusetts about 1690 and he married Susanna Samson, the granddaughter of Mayflower passenger Henry Samson (Mayflower Families, v.20, p.25). This Pilgrim line is given completely in the pedigree of Mandana Hillman, and to it are added the further Samson generation of Henry’s father James and the century of earlier English ancestors of Henry Samson’s mother Martha Cooper, as found by Robert L. Ward. Also added are the interesting family of “Governour” Thomas Mayhew, who claimed the island that became Martha’s Vineyard and set up there a medieval fiefdom called the Manor of Tisbury with himself as lord of the manor, of course. It lasted until after his death in 1682. Completely unlike his father was son Rev. Thomas Mayhew, who is considered the first real missionary to the Indians. [LINK to Mayflower page and/or Mandana pedigree]

Home | Earlier Generation

To submit family information or to be added to the email list for occasional announcements, please contact

© Copyright Norma Leigh Rudinsky 1999, 2010
All Rights Reserved