Sixth Generation

115. George RICHARDSON.

George RICHARDSON and Comfort PAGE had the following children:

200

i.

George RICHARDSON was born on 30 Apr 1804 in Cumberland County, Kentucky. "The Rev. George Richardson, An Old Kentucky Preacher." Rev. George Richardson, late of Logan County, Kentucky, finished his course in great peace and triumph, at his residence, on Saturday morning, May 16th, 1860. He was born in Cumberland County, Kentucky, April 30, 1804. At the age of fifteen he was powerfully converted and immediately joined the M.E. Church. In his sixteenth year, he was licensed to exhort and appointed class leader, which position he filled with great acceptability and usefulness to the Church up to the spring of 1823, when he was, by Rev. Peter Cartwright, appointed to the Cumberland Mission. The Mission embraced a portion of the Southern portion of Kentucky, toward the upper sources of the Cumberland River, a mountainous, uncultivated Region. The people of that region lived in caves and hollows and along the creeks, as they could find room between the lofty elevations. They generally lived in camps and log cabins. Some of them cultivated patches of Indian corn for bread and hominy. They depended on their guns and dogs to procure supplies of bear meat, venison, wild turkey, raccoon, etc. Their customs were of the primitive, backwoods style; dressed buck-skin pants, hunting shirts and moccasins, while wool hats or coonskin caps completed their usual wardrobes. As to churches and schoolhouses, they had none, and of course, felt no need of books. There were men and women there, for whom Jesus died who, at the age of twenty-five, had never heard a gospel sermon. To the tyranny of fashion, the cares and trammels of refined life, they were strangers. As to the paraphernalia of fashionable dress, center tables, melodeons, pianos, etc., they belonged not to their vocabulary. And as to wagons and glass lights, such things many of them had never seen. Free from the cares and trammels of refined society, among the men, their chief delight consisted in having a gun on the shoulder, shot pouch on their side, butcher knife on the other, and a pack of bear dogs at their heels. They devoted their days to sporting and their evenings to feasting, dancing and hunting stories. To and among this rude and uncultivated people, the Rev. T. C. Carpenter preached occasionally for a number of years before there was any regular organization of societies or missions. God blessed his labors in the conversion of a good many souls. In 1822, the Cumberland Mission was regularly organized and appended by Bishop McKendree to the Cumberland District, Peter Cartwright, presiding elder. The first missionary selected for this field of labor was Wm. Chambers, a conscientious brother, of sedate appearance, plain in his dress and address, a good preacher. In the fall of 1822, he took charge of the parish, new and fresh, not "gospel-hardened", but wholly uncultivated. The prospect of usefulness reconciled him to his privations. But the natives received him with suspicion. They regarded him as an enemy who had come to spy out their liberties. This was of course groundless. Bro. Chambers was a good man and desired only their salvation yet suspicion led to prejudice and prejudice to violence in his ejection. He soon became convinced that retreat to the land of civilization was best, if not his only means of safety and acted accordingly. So matters remained that winter, the missionary driven off and the field in the hands of the enemy. Brother Cartwright did not relish the defeat so well and deemed the enterprise worth another trial. So in the spring of 1823, Cartwright, on his regular rounds of quarterly meetings, was introduced to Brother Richardson, a stalwart, young Kentuckian, about nineteen years of age, but large and well formed. He was not yet a regular licensed preacher, but a zealous exhorter and a candidate for the itinerant ministry. Cartwright first took his physical dimensions and found them sufficiently imposing. He was nearly six feet high, broad-set, with well developed muscles, indicating both strength and activity. His mental powers accorded well with his physical. With only a plain english education, he evinced strong common sense and ready wit. His general bearing was fearless, but respectful. Brother Cartwright concluded he was the man he needed, and the following conversation, in substance, occurred: (Cartwright) "Brother Richardson, I want you to take charge of the Cumberland Mission. Those fellows up there have driven Bro. Chambers off, but it won't do for us to deliver them over to the devil without another effort to save them and I want to give them a strong pull. They must be converted somehow, and if you can't convert them with the gospel, do it with your fist." (Richardson) "Well, that is just the sort of place I should like to go to." The appointment of Bro. Richardson to the mission was settled, and with the least possible delay he was off to his work. His first public demonstration was made at the shiretown of a new county where his hamlet consisted of two log cabins, one of which was called the court house and the other the tavern. Richardson stopped at the latter and preached at the former. The public service over, he returned to the tavern and was reading his Bible, when and where he received an unceremonious call from some of his parishioners. The seat he occupied was an imperfect imitation of a chair, of some manufacture, strong, and heavy, but roughly finished. While he was alone, quietly reading, four young men stepped in and made a rude attack upon him. At first he tried to reason with them that he was a lone, unoffending stranger and not disposed to have any personal difficulty; to all of which they made no reply, but profanely affirmed their fixed purpose to flog him and drive him from their country as they had driven Chambers. As they crowded towards him to make the assault, Richardson rose up and placed the large chair between him and his assailants, and holding it firmly with both hands, took his position deliberately and gave them fair warning that if they rushed upon him they must take the consequences. But, four against one, they were confident of success and determined to give him a flogging. They, however, proceeded cautiously; two went on each side so that while fending off on one side, they might seize him on the other and thus confuse and overpower him. As they made a pitch altogether, he struck to the left and knocked down one, then quick as thought, swung his chair to the right and knocked down another. The other two began to back when he made a motion as if he would floor them also, but they precipitately left the room, as did the two slain also as fast as they could scramble up. So ended the first attempt to drive the new minister from the field. With the room once clear and quiet, he resumed his chair and finished his chapter, but little discomposed by what had transpired. He then called for his horse, rode four miles to the country, called for lodging at the house of a professed infidel, was taken in, stayed all night, reported what had occurred at the village and received from said infidel the present of a horse as a compliment for his valor in defending himself against the assault of the above mentioned young men. His next appointment was some way off. When he reached the place, the cabin was full of women and the yard full of men, many of whom, perhaps, felt more interest in seeing the preacher licked than in hearing him preach. While securing his horse and removing his saddle bags, five young men surrounded him, when the greeting proceeded in this wise: "Are you the preacher?" "I have come in the preachers place." "We are honest people up here in the mountains and don't allow horse thieves, counterfeiting preachers to go among us. We know you can't preach any, but just for the fun of it, we'll let you try and then we will lick you and send you off as we did the other fellow. We understand it. "As soon as I can get ready, I will let you know whether I can preach or not, and as far as that other thing is concerned, it cant be done." "I am a man of peace and come to bring the peaceful gospel. Of course fighting is not my line, but when compelled to fight in self defense, I am a very dangerous man. If I chose to engage in that kind of sport I would not ask an easier task than to whip half a dozen men, all on me at once." Passing through the crowd, Richardson then took his position in the cabin door and commenced the public service in the usual way, using his pocket edition of the hymn book and Bible. The women ceased their merry chat to stare and listen to the stranger and the men drew up in a solid square outside. During the sermon the power of God came down on the people and many, indoors and out, felt like men shot in battle and some shrieked aloud for mercy, and among the slain, were the five bullies pledged to lick the preacher. Sermon ended, Richardson passed on his knees, through the house and yard, exhorting and praying. The meeting held to near night. Many souls were converted. At the close, Richardson stated the terms of admission and proposed to form a class of probationers for membership. The people came freely, and among those who joined, were the five chivalrous blades who suffered the preacher to proceed only for fun before they were to give him a drubbing. How were the mighty fallen. Before Richardson reached his first appointment, his fame preceded him. Rumors became rife that a young giant was in the land, fully as strong as Samson who slew the Philistines with the jaw bone of an ass, and in conformance of this it was alleged that Richardson had licked four stout men, all on him at once at the court house, that he did it in a minute, and that without receiving a blow or a scratch. It was further alleged that he preached with such power as to knock a man down every lick at a distance of ten steps. Great curiosity was excited. Many were awe-stricken and the whole community was agitated. All opposition ceased, all the people were kind to the missionary. In the autumn of 1822, Bro. Richardson came to the conference, saying, as he found no organization, he assumed the duties of a minister, a class leader, steward, trustee, exhorter, local preacher, preacher in charge, presiding elder, bishop, and all, and as a result of that piece of a years work, he reported a mission circuit formed and two hundred and sixty one names enrolled as probationers for Church membership. In the fall of 1823, he entered the traveling connection on trial in the Kentucky Conference and was appointed to the Greenville Circuit. At the Conference of 1824, he was appointed to the Henderson Circuit. He was ordained deacon at Russelville, September 25, 1825, by Bishop McKendree and appointed to the Livingston Circuit. In the fall of 1826, he was sent to the Little River Circuit, with L.W. Wooden as colleague. These circuits were large, embracing a vast extent of territory, what is embraced now in the districts of several presiding elders. They averaged about twenty four to thirty two appointments, to be filled once in every four weeks. Here he labored with great zeal and success. Hundreds in the bounds of these circuits were converted and joined the M.E. Church, through his mentality. He did the work of an itinerant preacher. During the year he labored in the Little River Circuit, he ruptured a blood vessel about the lungs and utterly failed in health and at conference in the fall of 1827, he was superannuated, which relation he sustained up to the fall of 1830, when he was ordained elder by Bishop McKendree, again made effective and appointed to the Logan Circuit, which he filled with great acceptability and usefulness to the Church. This year closed Brother Richardson's Itinerant labors. At Conference, in the fall of 1831, he was again placed on the superannuated list, which relation he sustained for several years. Having lost all hope of ever regaining sufficient health to do the work in the itinerant field, at the Conference of 1836, he asked and obtained a location, which relation he sustained till God called him from "labor to refreshment." He settled in Logan County, Kentucky, near Russellville, where he lived until he exchanged the tears and sorrows of earth for the smiles and songs of Paradise. As a divine, he was doctrinal, and able defender of the policy of the Methodist Church. As a local preacher he was faithful, zealous and useful. He preached a great deal when his health would permit and that with great success. During his local ministry, hundreds were converted through his instrumentality. He was devoted to the Methodist Church, her institutions and peculiarities. He loved the itinerancy and was the unswerving friend of the faithful itinerant minister. He was religious from principle, a minister because the "Love of Christ" constrained him. It was the big business of his life to get ready to die. And in this his labor was not vain in the Lord. For thirty years he was the subject of frequent attacks of severe afflictions. His last illness was severe and protracted, but he bore it with patience and christian fortitude. I visited him for the last time a few weeks before his death. I found him able to walk about the room, but conscious of his approaching dissolution. We prayed together for the last time and God was pleased to hear. Said he to me, "Afflictions though severe are blessings in mercy sent." He often prayed during his illness that he might be delivered from the insupportable pain that he was trying to endure with resignation. About a week before he died, conscious that his dissolution was rapidly approaching, he requested that his family should all be called into his room, expressing a desire to talk with them, perhaps, for the last time, upon the importance of living so at last to meet in Heaven. His wife and children, all being present, he addressed them individually, admonishing all so to live and act through life as at last to meet in glory, where "sickness and sorrow, pain and death are felt and feared no more." He said, "I soon shall be there, I long to lay down this mortal body that I may put on Immortality." To his dear wife, he said,"Weep not for me, nor think of me when I am gone as one reposing in the cold clay, but as a happy spirit at home with God." Such views of the atonement, such exultation in prospect of eternal life were not realized by him before. There was not a shadow of a doubt of his acceptance with God. Relying on the exceeding great and precious promises of the gospel, he shouted aloud in prospect of immortality. After the interview with his family, he spoke but seldom, shut out from the world and with God, he seemed to be unconscious of all about him. He remained thus until Saturday morning, May 26, when he passed from his sufferings to God and Glory, without a groan or struggle. His funeral sermon was preached by the Rev. B. Stevenson at his residence, to a large and deeply affected audience of his friends and relatives. His mortal remains were laid to rest in the old family grave-yard to await the resurrection of the just. --By R. Y. Thomas (1861) [http://www.richardsonfamily.homestead.com/ReedRichardson.html]