James William Richard Papers

James William Richard D.D., LL.D. (1843-1909) Lutheran clergyman, professor at Carthage College and Wittenberg and Gettysburg Seminaries.

Dr. Richard was born near Winchester, Virginia on Feburary 14, 1843. His ancestors were frontier German farmers. His father, Henry P. Richard and his mother, Margaret Rosenberger, were strong personalities and in spite of their surroundings were outspoken in their opposition to secession from the Union. James William as a boy was strong of body, independent in thought, and devoutly religious. He soon showed a love for study and early dedicated himself to the ministry. At the age of eighteen he went to Roanoke College, where he spent the academic year of 1861-62. The next year he studied under John Marvin in his private school at Winchester. Then he taught a year in the puiblic school of Bloomery, Hampshire County, West Viringia. In the Fall of 1864 he resolved to go North to pursue his education. Flanking the aries, he reached the Potomac, crossed in Maryland, and taught near Hagerstown until the spring of 1865. The he entered the freshman class at Gettysburg College, from which he graduated with the class of 1868. Three years were then spent in the Gettysburg Seminary. He was licensed by the West Pennsylvania Synod in 1870. His first and only charge was at Empire, Illinois, where he began work in June 1871. He was ordained by the Northern Illinois Synod. After only two years in the pastorate he was called to Carthage College in 1873 as professor of Latin and history. During his ten years at Carthage he devoted much time also to the study of Church history and Greek. At the same time he began to take an active part in the general work of the Church. In 1879 he was secretary of the General Synod. From 1883-1885 he was secretary of the Board of Church Extension. In 1885 he took up professorial work again, this time as the Culler Professor of Sacred Philology at Wittenberg Seminary. From there he came to Gettysburg in 1889. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by Gettysburg College in 1886, and that of Doctor of Laws by the same institution in 1903. Dr. Richard wrote extensively. No less than sixty-five extended articles from his pen can be counted on the pages of the theological magazines from 1875 to 1909. Most of these can be found in the Lutheran Quarterly, of which he was associate editor during the last ten years of his life. Dr. Richard was twice married. On June 19, 1873, at Sterling, Illinois, he married Miss M.E. Tressler, daughter of the Colonel tressler who founded the Orphans' Home at Loysville, Pennsylvania. She died in 1889 at Gettysburg, shortly after he became a professor in the Seminary. In March 1891, he married Miss Marie E. Coffinberry, or Constatine Michigan, who survived him.