Rigdon’s financial situation after lost pages: The financial situation of the Rigdon family in Mentor, Ohio,1828 is described in Rigdon’s autobiography (anonymously written in the 3rd person) and published in May, 1843, in Vol. IV, No. 19, of the Times and Seasons (p. 289). Rigdon refers to a period of great preaching success (1828) then describes his family’s uncomfortable living conditions during that period (as evidence of his high moral principles and piety):
“During this state of unexampled success, the prospect of wealth and affluence was fairly open before him; but he looked upon it with indifference, and made every thing subservient to the promotion of correct principles: and having food and raiment, he learned therewith to be content. As a proof of this, his family were in no better circumstances, and made no greater appearance in the world, than when he labored at the occupation of tanning. His family consisted of his wife and six children, and lived in a very small, unfinished frame house, hardly capable of making a family comfortable; which affords a clear proof that his affections were not set upon things of a worldly nature, or secular aggrandizement.”