The Neville Stiff's Moving to Woodruff, Utah

In the summer of 1870 William Lee and his family settled two sections of land on the Bear River and built a house. Their oldest son, John remembered that 20 other families were called to go with him, though they didn’t all come immediately. That first season several men came from Bountiful or Sessions Settlement and investigated the land. Returning for their families, George Eastmann, William Longhurst, Charles Card, Isaac and Arbury Eastman, William T. Reed and Savanna C. Putnam became the first citizens of Woodruff.

Word apparently spread about the new community. There are no recorded calls from the church leaders, although they obviously were made. If William Stiff didn’t receive an official call, he responded to the challenge nevertheless. He and hi s sons were good builders. They understood building, milling, blacksmithing and William is even known in one record as a “clockmaker”. If they stayed in Salt Lake or Davis County they would never be of use to people who really needed them. Even at the ages of 67 and 63, William and Rachel decided to go. James and Alice agreed to come with them and Joseph Hyrum was soon to follow with his new wife Ann Lydia West. It was exactly the kind of situation they had been looking for: a new community that would need everything. And the Neville-Stiffs knew how to do just about everything.

Sometime the summer of 1872 William and Rachel packed up the handcart and began the 100 mile trip north and east through Weber Canyon along the newly cleared path for the railroad tracks, the only possible way to have gone through that rugged canyon. Early settlers tell of their watchfulness in going along the train bed, and in one case, a mule was almost killed when his shoe became wedged under the track with a train blowing smoke in the distance. The trip took about a week to the Bear River Valley and on to the little settlement of Woodruff. No doubt the Stiffs were traveling with others, who had wagons, but they took their two grandsons, William and Heber Cox, ages 8 and 5. Having those young legs to run for them would go a long way to make such a trip tolerable.
Everyone in the little town which began to spread out along Woodruff Creek was trying to build and set themselves up for the winter. William and Rachel had little strength to do either. They found a dugout in a bank at the side of the Woodruff Creek and decided to stay there. It wouldn’t be very grand, but it would be warm. (This dug out appears on the flyleaf map of Woodruff printed in The First 100 Years in Woodruff). As soon as the Rich County wind began to howl and the Bear River snow began to drift, they were grateful for anything warm.

The next February their son-in-law John Cox came from Salt Lake; and William Stiff, James Neville and John Cox presented themselves at the land office to buy land. Their names are the first three names to appear on existent land records for the town of Woodruff. They spoke for sections at the southern part of Woodruff, across the street where the road from Evanston turns north toward Randolph, and stayed there for several generations. However, William and Rachel had little strength to do much besides provide for their table, and they lived for two years in the dugout. After John and Annie had home, they may have moved in with them.