Daniel Sidney Richardson, 1851-1922                    In His Middle Years

On one of cupboard shelves in my office is a tidy lineup of diaries, journals and scrapbooks written or put together by one or another of my forebears. There is my grandfather Harry Espy’s diary from 1892, his brother Will’s diary from 1902, Aunt Kate’s diary from 1863 and so on. There is even the record book for the Baptist Church for the years 1879 to 1895 – the years that my great-grandmother Julia Jefferson Espy served as the clerk.

Most of these keepsakes are Espy related in some way because, after all, this is Oysterville, the Espy Family Seat for more than 160 years. But other treasures have worked their way among these many volumes. One is a leather-bound volume labeled “Newspaper Cuttings” in gilded letters on its spine. Pasted on the interior pages are, indeed, ‘newspaper cuttings’ of articles and poetry written by my non-Espy-great-grandfather, Daniel Sidney Richardson.

Annie Medora Taylor Richardson, 1856-1902       In Her Middle Years

As a young man, Dan Richardson served as Secretary to the American Legation in Mexico City. He was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant in July 1875 and served until 1878 when he needed to return home to California due to the sudden death of his father. By then, Dan had married beautiful Annie Medora Taylor whose family had fled to Mexico City following the Civil War. Their first child, Helen Medora, was eight months old when they returned to San Francisco; eighteen years later she would marry Harry Espy of Oysterville and eventually would become my grandmother…

The “Newspaper Cuttings” title page says: Ready Reference Receptacle for Scraps of Print, from our chief sources of knowledge, the Newspapers; with Patent Alphabetical Index, and spaces for Marginal Notes. It was what we nowadays call a “blank book’ and was published in London by Marcus Ward & Company.

A Newspaper Cutting

The first cutting is dated March 24 [1876] and is titled “Climbing a Volcano” – a story about (rather than by) Dan Richardson, complete with a wonderful illustration of Dan and his party on their way down from the peak. The caption reads: The Most Glorious Slide on Record – The Secretary of the United States Legation at Mexico, and Friends Coming From the Top of Orizaba at a Tremendous Speed – Descending In Fifteen Minutes What It Took Five Hours to Climb.

I’d like to spend the rest of the day exploring the other entries in this lovely old book but, ironically, I’m behind in my own scrapbook project. I can’t help but wonder if my rather mundane effort will hold as much interest for someone a century and a half from now as this old “Ready Reference Receptacle” does for me.