Richmond, Legh 29 January 1772 - 8 May 1827

Richmond, an evangelical divine, was the son of Henry Richmond, M.D. and Catherine Atherton, daughter of John Atherton of Walton Hall. His father was a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and practiced as a physician at Liverpool and Bath. Richmond married Mary, eldest daughter of Henry Legh. An accident in early childhood rendered Richmond permanently lame. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1789. There, he studied the practice and theory of music (Mundy 258). He graduated in 1794 and was ordained in 1798 and appointed Curate of Brading and Yaverland, in the Isle of Wight (Allibone 1802). Shortly afterwards, Richmond adopted the strictly evangelical views with which his name has been associated. He attributed the change to the influence of William Wilbeforces' "Practical View of Christianity." In 1805, he became Chaplain at the Lock Hospital in London and was also presented to the rectory of Turvey, Bedfordshire which he retained until his death. He became very popular as a preacher, and his services were sought after outside of his own parish. He was interested in the establishment of the great evangelical societies like the British and Foreign Bible society, the Church Missionary Society, and the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. He acted as joint secretary for the Religious Tract Society. In 1806, he became the editor of a series of selections from the writings of the English reformers and in 1814, the Duke of Kent appointed him his chaplain. He died at Turvey on 8 May 1827. He was survived by his wife and eight children (Mundy 259).

It was while he was living in the Isle of Wight that he collected material for his three famous tales of village life: The Dairyman's Daughter, The Young Cottager, and The Negro Servant. The simple pathos and piety of these stories won him instant popularity. Two editions of twenty thousand copies each of The Dairyman's Daughter were printed in 1816 and the book was translated into French, Italian, German, Danish, and Swedish. It also enjoyed wide circulation in the United States. His tracts, The Dairyman's Daughter, The Negro Servant, and The Young Cottager, or Little Jane were collected into two volumes in 1814 under the title Annals of the Poor. "The Annals" have been very popular both in England and abroad. Before 1849, four million copies of The Dairyman's Daughter were circulated. Richmond also published Domestic Portraiture: Memoirs of his Three Children (London, 1861). He contributed to the Christian Guardian and was the editor of The Fathers of the English Church, a periodical published in London from 1807 - 1812.

Allibone, Austin S. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased From The Earliest Accounts to the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1870. 1802 (Mundy 259).

Mundy, G.F.W. Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. XLVIII. Sidney Lee, ed. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1896. 258 - 259.