css3menu.com

html menu by Css3Menu.com


WHO WAS WHO in PLUM TOWNSHIP
~ Titusville Herald ~
~ February 13, 1964
By H. W. Strawbridge

Dr. W. J. Richey

Dr. W. J. Richey, a well-known rural physician of Chapmanville a few decades ago, was born near Wallaceville on May 11, 1859, a son of James and Mary Jane Cowan Richey. William Jackson Richey was the seventh of a total of 11 children. His father was a well-known and prosperous farmer.

William received his elementary education in the Wallaceville school. One of his early teachers, John D. Grove, pressed the parents to buy books for the benefit of their children. Books were rather uncommon in many of the homes of that day. Young William always had a great respect for this particular teacher.

Mr. Richey bought an unabridged dictionary for William when he was eight and he would lie down on the floor and read it as though it were a story book. He became adept at pronunciation. As a youngster he watched the construction of his father’s stately new farmhouse in 1867 and 1868. In fact, the carpenters made a wagon for him and he was very pleased over it.

When a small boy William once went with his father to Titusville with a load of produce to sell. It was getting dark when they were nearing home and they stopped on the brow of the hill just before descending into the Philander’s Hollow – so named because a man named Philanders Smith was found hanging there some years previous. As superstitions and ghost stories were more of a reality to people, especially children, then than now, Mr. Richey decided to put William to the test. He was not superstitious and he didn’t want William to be either. He handed the lines to William, got off the wagon and told him to take the wagon home; that he (father) was going to cut across the field and woods to open the gate and start choring. William worked up the courage and hustled the team and wagon across the eerie hollow and its bridge and arrived home without having encountered any ghosts. However, his mother was very angry at his father for this incident and scolded him, ending with these words: “And Jim Richey, I know why you did that ! You, yourself, were too scared to go across that hollow in the dark !”

William received further education at the new Sunville Seminary under the very capable teaching of Prof. S. H. Prather and his assistant, Miss Laura Fogg. When 18 he did his first teaching in a school on the hill just outside of Polk. He also taught at Grand Valley, Garland and Diamond. When teaching at Diamond, a large number of his pupils were named Proper, a statement he often made in later years.

In 1881, the year his father died, William and a brother attended one term at the Allegheny College in Meadville.

William possessed a nice tenor voice. In the summer of 1883 he sang in the chorus at Chautauqua when the noted choir director and hymn writer, E.O. Excell, was directing it. On Sept. 11 and 12 that year a reunion of former pastors of the Sunville Methodist Church as held in the large and relatively new Methodist Church in Chapmanville. It was through William that the people engaged Excell to come and present a concert and direct the singing. This event took place the evening of the 12th with a great crowd on hand.

On Jan. 29, 1884, William and several companions started for Atlanta, Ga., in the book dispensing business. He was quite successful in this venture. While in Atlanta William came across a man from California who was engaging many Negroes to go to Southern California to work on a ranch. William was asked if he would be interested in taking charge of the Negroes on the train trip west. He replied in the affirmative, and to the West he went. The Negroes, incidentally, didn’t stay on the ranch. They got jobs elsewhere at a better pay. William was foreman of the Greenfield Ranch in Kern County for three or four years. He got $100 a month plus room and board. He had charge of three labor gangs, one American, one Mexican and one Chinese. He rode horseback most of the time. Through teaching, selling books, ranching and working in the lumber woods one winter, William saved enough money to put himself through medical college.

In 1888 or 1889 he entered the Cleveland Medical School (later incorporated with Ohio State University). He graduated on March 22, 1893, and registered in the Venango County Medical Register on April 8, 1893. He also studied summers with Dr. Curren of Oil City and practiced two years with the elder doctor as an intern. Young Dr. Richey also spent a summer assignment at the Spiritualist camp at Lilydale, N.Y.

During his medical schooling Dr. Richey took the time to get married. The estimable young lady was Miss Grace Barton McQueen, who was born Nov. 16, 1865, near Geneva, one of four children of Thomas and Cynthia Dennis McQueen. Her father’s family was living in the present McPheters home in Sunville where William met Grace at a party she had given. She was a graduate of the Meadville High School in 1882, and taught school near Conneaut Lake, Plumer, New Jersey and Rochester, N.Y. She and Dr. Richey were married in Buffalo, N.Y., on Oct. 12, 1890, and they began housekeeping in Cleveland where he continued his medical schooling.

After serving his internship with Dr. Curren in Oil City, Dr. Richey established his practice in Warren in 1893. He was not there long when his office burned, somehow caused by an oil lamp.

In the early summer of 1894 Dr. and Mrs. Richey lived in his mother’s large house near Wallaceville. Upon the death of Dr. R.M. Strauss of Chapmanville, in early August, 1894, Dr. Richey moved into the Strauss house across from the Methodist Church. He rented this place and practiced there for four years.

When T.T. Watt bought the property the Richey family moved two doors east into the empty Cheney house and stayed there about four years. Then they lived in the Fred Beers house across the road a couple months before finally moving into the remodeled Fox home which he bought in the east side of the community in 1902. The doctor had a separate office building erected that same year and practiced there until his death.

Dr. and Mrs. Richey were the parents of the following four children: William Clyde Richey, Jan. 15, 1892; Donald James Richey, July 1, 1895; Leila Geraldine Richey, March 6, 1898 and Leroy Richey, April 7, 1900

Clyde married on June 5, 1917, Miss Jennie Foster of Bradleytown. She died in 1960. A retired schoolteacher, Clyde now resides in Tucson, Ariz. His children are Mrs. Katherine Grace Harting of Tucson, Eugene f. Richey of Reading, Mass., and Mrs. Rosemary Daily of Whittier, Calif.

Donald married on June 27, 1917, Miss Laura Wells of Springboro. They reside at Hendersonville, N.C. He also taught school. Their only son, William A. Richey, lives at Wilmington, Del.

Leila resides at Chapmanville. She, too, is a retired schoolteacher. Leroy died at the age of 4 days of a liver

ailment. He is buried at Chapmanville.

Dr. W. J. Richey was about five feet, 11 inches in height with a weight of probably 175 pounds. When young, his hair was light, but after his work in California it was darker. His hair was white at last. He was fair complexioned and a quiet man. He was about 30 years old and a medical student when this handsome photograph of him was taken.

During his years of practice he responded to calls at all hours of the day and night regardless of the weather conditions. He made his calls with his horse and buggy and often the roads would be so muddy that he’d unhitch and ride horseback to his destination. The same held true with his horse and sleigh in winter when the roads were drifted full. In 1914 he bought his first automobile, a Model T Ford, from James Arters. This eased his calling during good weather. He took quite an interest in autos when they first appeared on the market. He secured a catalogue of them, but it cost too much money to buy one at first.

Dr. Richey served as a Venango County auditor from 1891 until 1893. On Sept. 14, 1895 he was initiated into the Diamond IOOF Lodge, and he remained a member until his death. He served as Plum township Republican Committeeman for several years, relinquishing the position about 1918. In the fall of 1911 he was elected a Plum township school director and he served more than 20 years. He also was a member of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Richey sang in a number of mixed or male quartets at public functions. He had learned to sing tenor in the oldtime singing schools conducted by James McGranahan, a famous singing teacher. As a youngster the doctor undoubtedly sang in the Sunville Presbyterian choir, which church he united with in 1877.

While practicing in Oil City, he was a member of a quartet in one of the larger churches there. The first tenor or soprano was from Cleveland, the second tenor was Dr.Richey, the baritone was from Pittsburgh and the bass, John Smith of Chapmanville.

After his removal to Chapmanville he, with Mrs. Richey, attended the Methodist Church where he sang in the choir and had charge of the music of the church in general for a number of years. Mrs. Richey became a member of the Methodist Church in November, 1896, by transfer from a Presbyterian Church, probably in her childhood area. For a few years in the 1913 -14 time period, she is listed as having been a church steward. She taught a young people’s Sunday school class for several years.

From the late summer of 1905 until the summer of 1906 the doctor was very ill with typhoid fever, which developed into “typhoid spine” – exceedingly rare and very painful with any movement. He insisted on drinking water from the old spring on his mother’s place, so family members went down and brought up water from it.

The last social occasion that he attended prior to this illness was the Chapmanville harvest home picnic, and the first social occasion he attended after the illness was the same picnic, where he rested in a hammock strung between two trees. For years he was a member of the association of this picnic.

He was a great baseball fan, having been a Pittsburgh Pirate fan at first. After Clint Brown, a Black Ash youngster, began playing he turned into a Cleveland Indians fan.

Dr. Richey was a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, and his one hobby was the study of the Civil War. He had a number of books upon this war. He attended the 50th anniversary reunion of the Blue and Gray soldiers at Gettysburg in 1913. In the military Dr. Richey had served in the National Guard when young. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Corps during World War I. However, he was past the age of acceptance into actual duty.

His calls upon the sick and distressed became limited when he sustained the first of a series of strokes in November 1926. He fell and broke a hip while recuperating from this stroke. He used a cane after that. He did recover enough to continue making calls with someone else driving the automobile. In February, 1932, he suffered a stroke, and again in October that year he fell and cut his head. In December he submitted to an operation, the gradual consequence of which seemed too much for his system. On Friday morning, Jan. 6, 1933, he suffered a severe heart attack, but rallied somewhat. On Saturday he failed rapidly, and death occurred in his home just after noon on Monday, the 9th. Acute dilation of the heart was given as the cause. The funeral took place on Tuesday afternoon in the Methodist Church, which was filled with relatives and friends. Rev. L.V. Mohnkern officiated with Odd Fellows conducting graveside services in the Chapmanville Cemetery. Mrs. Richey died in the Titusville Hospital on Feb. 13, 1942.

Lastly, the Richey home with all its contents unfortunately burned to the ground on the morning of May 2, 1953. May precious heirlooms which can never be replaced were consumed in the regrettable fire.

Transcribed by Penny Kulbacki Minnick
minnick862@verizon.net

Disclaimer:there may be errors due to transcription of information from both early and late (current contributors) work.