He had other things also for which he praised the Lord. He was grateful to the Lord for the faithful humble, congenial wives he had been blessed with, who found pleasure in simple lives, who could make the most of the bare necessities, who were good, economical and thrifty housekeepers, who preferred to make home attractive by its simplicity, to incurring a burden of indebtedness by incumbering it with incongruous luxuries. If their tastes had differed from his, if they had been extravagant and wasteful, and scattered while he gathered, if they had been lacking in sympathy or interest in the public duties to which he devoted so much time and attention, Thomas would have had a different story to tell of his life. His service would have been minimized and his suffering must have been greatly aggravated.
His children also had brought him much comfort and comparatively little sorrow. They developed no criminal tendencies; they were virtuous, honest, industrious and frugal, and if not as full of zeal as their parents, they at least retained the faith and enjoyed and deserved the respect of their fellows. They manifested great love and respect for their parents also, and the numerous occasions upon which his posterity assembled voluntarily around the parental hearthstone, to show special honor, afforded grateful relief to his pain-racked and strenuous existence. On one of these happy occasions his posterity presented him with a gold headed cane; upon another a costly gold watch, which, of course, he appreciated—not so much for their intrinsic worth as for the love that prompted their bestowal.
If any man ever loved his children, and gave them good counsel, and set before them a good example, and frequently and earnestly testified to them of the truth of the Gospel, Thomas Briggs certainly did. And if any of his children ever depart from the faith, adopt bad habits or fall into sin, they will not have their father to blame for it.
As his posterity increased, and many of them scattered out into distant parts, he was no longer able to exercise the patriarchal supervision over them that he formerly had. His sons, James and Thomas, removed to Star Valley, and made new homes, and soon afterwards the latter met with a shocking accident through his team running away. One of his eyes was almost put out, and his skull was laid open for three of four inches, but through the blessing of the Lord he recovered. Wm. Ray Briggs, a grandson, met with a shocking death in Idaho, while digging a well, through having a horse fall down the well on top of him. His daughters, Mary Ann and Ann E., also died in Idaho. On the 3rd of July, 1898, his wife, who had been his faithful companion and shared his joys and sorrows for almost twenty years, passed away.
All of these and other minor incidents of a fatal or sorrowful nature added to the burden of his suffering, but he bore up manfully under them, regarding death philosophically, as only a temporary separation, and never doubting that in the economy of an Allwise Creator he would yet enjoy with his loved ones an eternal reunion.
The death of his wife left him bereft and lonely, and subjected him to additional hardships, but he sought and found solace in work and in devoted attention to the poor and unfortunate, a comparison of whose circumstances with his own made him frequently feel that he had very much to be thankful for.
On the 11th of May, 1904, Thomas married his third wife, after living alone for nearly seven years. She was a widow named Ann Williams, whose husband died in England, where also she had left three children when she migrated to Utah for the Gospel's sake.
Two months after his marriage his wife started on a trip to England, which she had contemplated long before her marriage, and for which she had money of her own to pay. She also made a subsequent trip to England two years later, to visit relatives.
On the last day of 1905, Brother Briggs entered in his diary the following summary of his spiritual work for the year—blessed twenty-six children, gave thirty-four patriarchal blessings, attended eleven funerals, administered one hundred and ninety-four times to the sick (and adds his testimony that the Lord had heard his prayers;) also had done or caused to be done in the Temple in Salt Lake City one hundred and thirty-three baptisms, seventy-seven endowments and one hundred and twenty-four sealings.
This year's work was not thus summarized because the showing was in excess of any previous year, but rather because he had never previously thought of totaling up his year's doings.