Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/267

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
RICHARDSON
RICHARDSON

as secret correspondent of the " Tribune," and re- turned, after many narrow escapes, just before the firm? on Sumter. He next entered the field as war correspondent, and for two years alternated between Virginia and the southwest, being present at many battles in the night "f :i May. 18G:i, he under- took, in company with Junius Henri Browne, a fellow-eorrespondent of the "Tribune," and Rich- ard T. Colburn, of the New York World," to run the batteries of Vicksburg on two barges, which were lashed to a steam-tug. After they had been under fire for more than half an hour, a large shell struck the tug, and, bursting in the furnace, threw the coals on the barges and set them on fire. Out of 34 men, 18 were killed or wounded and 16 were captured, the correspondents among them. The Confederate government would neither release nor exchange the "Tribune" men, who, after spending eighteen months in seven southern prisons, escaped from Salisbury, N. C., in the dead of winter, and, walking 400 miles, arrived within the National lines at Strawberry Plains, Tenn., several months before the close of the war. They had had charge of the hospitals at Salisbury, where a dreadful mor- tality prevailed, and brought with them a complete list, so far as procurable, of the deaths there, which they printed in the " Tribune," furnishing the only information that kindred and friends in the north had of their fate. Richardson's death was the result of a pistol-shot fired by Daniel McFarland in the " Tribune " office on 26 Nov., 1869. MeFarland had lived unhappily with his wife, who had obtained a divorce and was engaged to marry Mr. Richard- son. A few days before his death they were married, the ceremony being performed by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Richardson's first wife had died while he was in prison. The last four years of his life were passed in lecturing, travel, and writing. He published " The Field, the Dungeon, and the Es- cape" (Hartford, 1865); " Beyond the Mississippi" (1866); and "A Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant" (1868), all of which sold largely. A collection of his miscellaneous writings, with a memoir by his widow. Abby Sage Richardson, was printed under the title "Garnered Sheaves" (1871). MRS. RICH- ARDSON has published -Familiar Talks on English Literature" (Chicago, 1881), and several compila- tions, and she has appeared frequently as a lecturer.


RICHARDSON, Charles Francis, author, b. in Hallowell, Me., 29 May, 1851. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1871," and was editorially con- nected with the "Independent" in New York city in 1872-'8, with the "Sunday-School Times" in Philadelphia in 1878-'80, and" with " Good Litera- ture," New York city, in 1880-'2. Since 1882 he has been professor of" the Anglo-Saxon and English language and literature at Dartmouth. His publi- cations include " A Primer of American Litera- ture " (Boston, 1876) ; " The Cross," a volume of poems (Philadelphia, 1879) ; " The Choice of Books" (New York, 1881) ; and " American Litera- ture " (2 vols., 1887-'8).


RICHARDSON, Edmund, merchant, b. in Caswell county, N. C., 28 June. 1818: d. in Jack- son, Miss., 11 June, 1886. He attended a common school for several terras, became a clerk in a store in Danville, Va., and at sixteen years of age settled in Jackson, Miss., where he gradually engaged in cotton-planting, shipping, and manufacturing to a laruv extent. At the close of the civil war he was bankrupt, but he successfully engaged in business again, and became the largest cotton-planter in the world. His fortune was estimated at from $10,000,- 000 to 112,000.000, and he was the owner of forty cotton-plantations in Louisiana. He was chairman of the board of management of the New Orleans centennial exposition in 1884-'5, and gave $25,000 toward paving its expenses.


RICHARDSON, Edward, mariner, b. in Bos- ton. Ma^., in 178!: d. in Brooklyn, N. Y., 6 April. 1876. He was bred a sailor, and for many years was captain of a line of packet ships that plied be- tween New York and Liverpool. He organized the Marine temperance society in 1833, and lived to see 52,000 names signed to its pledge. He retired from sea service about 1837, for several years was superintendent of the New York city seaman's home, and was a vice-president of the New York port society. At the age of seventy-three he organ- ized the Water street and Dover street missions for sailors, established day- and Sunday-schools in that vicinity, and was active in religious meetings for seamen and the residents of those streets. Much of his latter life was devoted to the welfare of the poor of New York and Brooklyn.


RICHARDSON, Henry Hobson, architect, b. in Priestley's Point, St., James parish, La., 29 Sept., 1838; d. in Brookline, Mass., 28 April, 1886. His father. Henry D. Richardson, was a planter of American birth, but his earlier ancestors were Scotchmen, who had moved to England before the family came to this country. His mother was Catherine Caro- line Priestley, a granddaughter of Dr. Joseph Priest- ley. He was at first intended for West Point and the army, but the death of'his father

changed his plans,

and he was graduated at Harvard in 1859. His college career was not remarkable for proficiency or promise, but after his graduation he went to Paris, where he began tin' study of architecture, and at once developed remarkable powers and capacity for work. The 1. >ss of his property during the civil war obliged him to serve in an architect's office for his support while he was pursuing his studies. In 1865 he returned to this country and became a partner of Charles D. Gambrill in the firm of Gambrill and Richardson. His earliest buildings were in Springfield. Mass., where the railroad offices and the Agawam bank at once gave evidence of his power. The Church of the Unity in the same city is a Gothic building, and quite unlike the ecclesiastical structures of his later years. His strongest work began with the erection of Brattle street church in Boston in 1871. The next year he presented his plans for Trinity church. Boston (shown in the accompanying illustration), for which he was chosen to be the architect, and which occupied much of his thought and time till it was finished in 1877. It is after the manner of the churches of Auvergne in France, and gets its character from its great central tower, which, both within and without, is the feature of its architecture. Before he had done with Trinity, Mr. Richardson was already at work upon the Cheney buildings at Hartford, Conn., and not much later on the Memorial library at North Kasi i ni, the public library at Woburn, and the state capitul at, Albany, on which last building he