Richardson Family Papers | Table of Contents

-- Note: this page is under construction and will be updated as posts are finished and published--

In 1983, Madge outlined five volumes, of which two were published. I have divided two volumes and added two, which gives us nine "volumes" as follows:

Introduction: The Richardson Family Papers, by Madge Richardson Walsh, editor

• Introduction 
• Richardson Family Chart 
• Acknowledgements

Volume I - Ella Richardson Street 

• Introduction
• All the Rights and Privileges Pertaining Thereto
• A Double Wedding
• A Hunting Accident
• Obituary: Ella Richardson Street

Volume II - Florence Richardson Street: Reminiscences of the Family (originally published in 1983)

• Introduction 
• Snapshots: The Northfield Richardsons
• The David Fay Richardson Family in Northfield, Minnesota 
• Father Enters Big Business 
• The Mystery of Mother's Christmas Clock 
• Aunt Phoebe's Journey
• Birthdays
• Letters: Florence to Claude Street (1906)
• Not counted
• Clippings: Four Generations Join in Baptismal Ceremony 
• Obituary: Florence Richardson Street

Volume III - Ruth Richardson Smith: A Memory Book and Letters of an Oregon Bride (originally published in 1991)

• Introduction 
• Private Diary of Ruth Catherine Richardson, Part I 
• Private Diary of Ruth Catherine Richardson, Part II 
• Letters of an Oregon Bride, Part I
• Letters of an Oregon Bride, Part II
• Ruth Richardson Smith Memorial 

• Obituary: James William Smith 

Volume IV - Fay Watson Richardson

• Introduction
• Letter on Mother's Day
• Fay and the Pulling Contest 

Volume V - Russell David Richardson: Reminiscences (1971) and In his own words (1977)

• Introduction
• Reminiscences, Chapter 1 
• Part 1: Beginnings in Northfield 
• Part 2: Logging Coming soon!
• In his own words: He lived, but... Coming soon!
• Reminiscences, Chapter 2
• Part 1: World War I 
• Part 2: Jessie 
• Reminiscences, Chapter 3 
• Part 1: A fine day outing
• Part 2: A wedding, a funeral, and a birth
• Reminiscences, Chapter 4 
• At Sea
• Letters 
• Letter from Salina Cruz, 1919
• Letter from Mother Jessie (1919)
• Panama Canal letter & history
• The Accidental Accountant
• The Merchant Marine and other odd jobs
• Russell and Jessie in Japan
• Obituary: Russell David Richardson
• Obituary: Jessie Cutting Richardson
• Postscript by Madge Richardson Walsh

Volume VI - George Owen Richardson: Autobiography (1937) 

• Introduction
• Note on Ancestry
• Autobiography 
• Chapter 1: Ancestry
• Chapter 2: Birth and Early Years
• Early Days of Samuel Huston College
• With her Grandmother
• Note on the Milne Family and Epilogue

Volume VII - David Fay Richardson: Looking Back over Eighty Years (1938)

• Introduction
• Looking Back over Eighty Years
• Later Years in Oregon
• Obituary: David Fay Richardson
• Biographical Sketches
• Frank Asbury Richardson
• Earl Mercein Richardson

Volume VIII - George Warren Richardson: Recollections of My Life Work (1905)

• Introduction
• A Photographic Footnote
• My Journey to the Crossroads of Race, Faith and Family in America, article by James D. Richardson (external link)
• Life Chronology
• Clippings: Four Generations Join in Baptismal Ceremony
• The Journal
• Transcribed Excerpts
• A preaching gig
• Obituary: George Warren Richardson

Volume IX - Mothers and Daughters

• Caroline Fay 
• Dedication: Three Carolines
• Love letter (1849)
• Poems
• Diary of an Abolitionist's Wife
• Tiny moccasins
• Obituary: Caroline (Fay) Richardson (1887)
• Ella Fay: Stars and flowers
• Katherine Clementine Watson
• Letters: The Watson Family
• Watson Genealogy & Chart 
• Watson Family Obituaries:
• Charles Herbert Watson (1914)
• Amy (Watson) Featherstone (1916)
• Charles Elliott Watson (1960)
• Mary Emma Richardson
• Favorite Bible verses
• Graduation Days 
• Letters: to Samuel Huston College 1943 Coming soon!
• Madge Richardson Walsh
• The Lone Arranger
• Some Thoughts on Tolerance (Or, Tolerance is a Two-Way Street)
• My Mother's #MeToo
• Obituary: Madge Richardson Walsh

On Armistice Day

by Madge R. Walsh, Nov. 11, 2008

My father, my brother, and my husband all were veterans of the US Navy.

Ensign Russell D Richardson

My father volunteered in World War I, and was sent to Mare Island Naval Station on San Francisco Bay, where the USS Gridley (a four-stack destroyer) was being built. As a “landsman,” he was to be trained as an electrician, but the class was full so there was a long wait until the next class. Half a dozen of these “landsmen” got bored with nothing to do, so they hired tutors and studied to get their commissions as officers – and did. (It was a relief not to have to sleep in a hammock anymore!). My father was assigned to the Gridley as an ensign; during the builder’s trial runs, it got pretty rough – green water over the bow at 35 knots – but my father didn’t get seasick, and never did (I wish I could say the same for myself, but I can’t.). The day the Gridley sailed out of San Francisco Bay was the day the Armistice was signed.

One of the highlights of that first voyage was the passage through the Panama Canal, recently built; another was that the Gridley was one of the ships stationed at intervals across the Atlantic to report on the flight of the four Navy seaplanes across the Atlantic, and if necessary, rescue any that didn’t make it. The Gridley did have to rescue the pilot of one plane; another destroyer tried to tow it, but the seaplane was not built for that kind of treatment, and sank.

David C Richardson

After the war, my parents married and had my brother, who served in World War II. He was in college, Naval ROTC, and managed to graduate (University of California). He was immediately sent to New York for midshipman school at Columbia. The Navy then sent him off to the South Pacific. He had a small sailboat on San Francisco Bay, and the Navy put him on a small ship, a wooden APc originally designed for mine sweeping, etc. They had the not unpleasant duty of exploring the remote islands & atolls to check up on the presence of any Japanese (didn’t find any); but then were part of the Philippine invasion. At Luzon, his little ship was attacked by a kamikaze, but another US ship shot it down, so they were not damaged. From there, they faced the imminence of invading Japan; but were “saved” from that by the atomic bomb, and the subsequent Japanese surrender. People decry the use of atomic weapons, but at least in this case, my family is grateful that the invasion did not take place, and my brother was not killed.

After his tour of duty was done, my brother was assigned as captain of an oceangoing tug launched in Portland, Oregon; he was to take it to Honolulu. It had a small crew, only 2 officers – my brother and a navigator. The poor navigator was seasick all the way to San Francisco, so my brother did the navigation. As they approach the pilot boat at the entrance to San Francisco Bay, the fog lifted – my brother said if he kept on going, it would’ve run right into it. Since he’d sailed the San Francisco Bay and knew it well, he was darned if he take on a pilot, and took the tug into the bay himself. After delivering the tug at Pearl Harbor, he was released from the Navy. He continued to sail in small (and larger) boats, even in the Midwest, whenever he could find a lake to sail on.

Bert T. Walsh

My husband was also in the Navy, during the Korean “conflict.” He served on an LCd; once he showed me a photo of the hold – the “dock” – loaded with wounded men on stretchers, being evacuated. Before that, growing up in San Francisco, he had been a Sea Scout, and made lifelong friends – I still have a photo of their sailboat, the “Corsair,” and its “pirate” flag is brought out at every reunion. He attended the Maritime Academy at Vallejo, now part of the University of California system. He sailed on oil tankers and also for Matson, to Honolulu. I recall the time after we were married and had our son, we were walking along San Francisco’s Embarcadero, and he told our little boy how to get on a board a liner as a stowaway! But he had taken advantage of the G.I. bill, went to college and eventually became a licensed mechanical engineer. For a man who really didn’t enjoy traveling, his work took us to quite a few places, in the US and Canada. After we “retired” to Northern California, he even had a small sailboat on Whiskeytown Lake. Our son has missed our latest embroilment (now too old). I’m hoping my grandsons – and their contemporaries – never again have to face such situations.

Letter from Salina Cruz, 1919

A Letter from Russell Richardson to Jessie Cutting, Salina Cruz, Mexico

Salina Cruz, Mexico

3 p.m., Friday, March 28, 1919

Dearest,

            I had three letters ready to mail to you here, but the American consul says he wants to send some letters to the States by us – their mail service is so undependable, sometimes taking three weeks.

            There is quite a story to our arrival, so I shall go back and relate it in chronological order. At 7:30 this morning we anchored just outside the breakwaters to Salina Cruz Harbor.

            The motor dory was launched in the Captain sent Ted ashore in it to visit the consul and see if the dock was ready for us to oil. The sea was very rough and Ted got soaked from the spray before he had cut through the two breakers. They had just got off the bow of our ship when the engine died and they came drifting down on the ship. While the coxswain worked at the engine Ted fended her off. All of a sudden the engine started and with the wind and see in the same direction they were whisked from bow to stern in an instant. Then he circled about to get on his course and head for the gap between the two breakwaters. The little old dory rolled and pitched like an egg shell and when she climbed up a wave and suddenly reached the crest I swear she flew clear out of water. Not a few expected to see her capsize any instant. But once he got turned around it was all right, and he disappeared in ten minutes into the inner harbor.

            At ten he returned. We hoisted the boat and up anchor and headed in. The outer harbor is very small and the inner one smaller still. We aimed to pass through into the inner harbor and more alongside the dock – a sharp turn to our left.

            So far I have forgotten to mention that there is a terrific off shore wind blowing. I have never encountered anything like it. The mountains seem to form a funnel which collects the trade winds from a large area and concentrate them all to blow out of Salina Cruz Harbor. Many a hat was lost this morning – Lieut. Conover lost two (and they cost $12.50 each now.). When you went onto the forecastle you had to lean forward at a 45° angle and virtually claw your way into the wind. And on the bridge when we were underway heading into it, if you looked up with your eyes open the wind grabbed the lashes and pinned your lids down so that you couldn’t close them – making tears stream out. And if you put your head down and closed them, you could, only with great difficulty get them open in the face of the wind. ’S a fact.

            Well, in we went, slowing to 2/3 speed as we passed the breakwaters and to 1/3 halfway across the outer harbor. This entrance to the inner Harbor is 25 yards wide – the ship 31 feet. Allowing a little for the wind to carry us toward the left hand side, he headed straight for it. But the instant our nose entered the gap it was evident that she would not pass through without the ship hitting this concrete wall a glancing blow.

Russell's sketch superimposed over a satellite picture of the harbor today.

            Of course what I would have done under similar circumstances doesn’t make any difference – but I would have run up full speed and tried to skin through before we bumped at any rate: but he rang up 2/3 astern. Before the result of 2/3 astern was noticed we hit, just abaft of no. 4 smoke pipe. You could see the side bend in just like a football – but unlike a football it didn’t spring out again. The force of this impact through the stern out a bit and he grabbed this opportunity to try to forge ahead – going 2/3 ahead. To protect the propeller he stopped before she banged again and this time she bumped the propeller guard – bending this a little – though from the bridge, the skipper and all thought it had been carried away.

            As soon as she was clear he rang up two thirds again and cleared the entrance though it was perfectly evident that the beach was only a stones throw away – (I have drawn the chart true to scale). The instant the stern was clear he rang up two thirds astern but it was too late – we were going aground on the beach. So he let go an anchor to help stop his motion. We stopped all right when our nose ran into the sandy beach.

            Then we ran two lines ashore to the oil dock – from bow and stern. To do this we had to launch a boat – a dozen times this little dory nearly capsized but finally the lines were made fast. Then we heaved in on the lines and gave full speed astern on the engines and she came off slick as an ax. By noon we were tied up and oil coming aboard. It didn’t seem to worry Capt. Fletcher any. He was very cool all the time and never swore or showed any signs of weakening.

            After lunch he ordered me to go to the American consul – report our arrival and tell him that so far as he, Capt. Fletcher, was concerned, the official call of courtesy by the consul might be omitted, for he himself would call on the consul at 2:30. The consul was agreeable and so the Capt. is making his call.

            Dressed in my spiffy whites, down the main streets of Salina Cruz to call on the consul I felt like quite a personage.

            The place boasts 5000 inhabitants and four white people. It is typically Mexican – the numerous hounds – scantily clad, barefoot natives. Fruit vendors mostly women, met us on the dock. In town the narrow sandy streets are deserted except for a wild pig here and there and prehistoric wooden carts with cumbersome wooden wheels drawn by runty, bony, oxen. Nothing seems to thrive, the children are skinny, all are small of stature and the men can’t even grow a healthy appearing mustache. A flock of goats and kids obstructed the crossing at one street and even they were stunted, scrawny animals.

            We passed the city garrison. An ordinary Mexican structure was a long veranda along its front. The wall was completely covered with cartridge belts, hung there and numerous rifles leaned against it. A sentinel stood by the door in a strictly military posture, absolutely rigid, the gun by his side almost as long as he was tall. He looks neither to the right or left – yet I believe he saw everything. Next to the irregular mass of flat rocks bordering the street which I took to be a sidewalk was built a barricade of brick four feet high and two feet thick with rifle slits in it every few feet.

            Love in a hurry - Russell