Parents: Asahel Newell and Elizabeth Bushnell.
Ruth and her sister Louisa were both married by their brother, Jeduthan.
There's a marriage record to 1-Dr. Anthony Cobly on 16 Mar 1837. Then a 2nd marriage record to 2-Solomon Joseph Despain on 30 Jun 1842.
After they were married they lived in Illinois until the fall of 1853 when they moved to Arkansas then Tennessee in 1861. May 10, 1861 they started for Utah arriving in Salt Lake City 17 August 1861 with David Cannon company. Ruth having driven a horse team all the way across the plains even though she had a son, Alvin David, born 1 September 1861, two weeks after arriving there.
Ruth Amelia moved with her husband to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon where the three youngest children were born. She was President of the Relief Society for many years (1877-1896), a true Latter-day Saint to the day of her death 29 August 1901.
Sometime before 1858, Mother took a young girl in to live with them, Susan Dean, who came to Utah with us and some years later Father married her as his second wife, and mother's trials were many. She was so unhappy when her first girl was born, Amanda, 8 December 1853 that she cried three days and nights because she was afraid her girl would suffer as she had done.
Mother moved several times. The first to Salt Lake City in 1869 so we children could go to school. We lived in the 9th ward three months, then moved back to the old home in Granite. The next move was to South Cottonwood, where we lived until father took up a homestead on Granite Bench so father could prove up on his land. Oh how hard she worked on that old sandy place. She would just get the water running to suit her, then it would break the ditch out above and she would have to go up to the head gate and turn the water off and fix a great place in the ditch almost as big as a house. The last 16 years of her life she suffered with rheumatism. The last eight years she was perfectly helpless.