Mrs. Samuel A. Riggs was born Kate Doane Earle. She married the judge in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania on December 31, 1861. Mr. Riggs had graduated from the Cincinnati Law School and been admitted to the Ohio bar in 1858. In 1859 he had come to Lawrence, Kansas.

Mr. and Mrs. Riggs survived Quantrill's raid of Lawrence on August 21, 1863. Judge Riggs was going to hide, but as he left the house he met one of the ruffians. Mrs. Riggs ran out to aid her husband by seizing the reins of the man's horse until the judge had disappeared.

They had one child, Henry Earle Riggs, a graduate of the University of Kansas in 1886.

This picture was given to the Lawrence Room by Miss Madge Bullene, in 1932. It had belonged to her mother, Mrs. Wilder S. Metcalf.