DOCTOR RICHARDSON came to Wellsburg in January of 1830. This valley town, located about forty miles down the Ohio from its source and just north of the mouth of Buffalo Creek, was shouldered up against the river by giant overlooking hills which allowed only a narrow strip of level land for the settlement. That settlement had been laid out in 1790 by Charles Prather on 481 acres of land. In honor of its founder the Virginia legislature named it Charlestown, but later withdrew the name because it was so easily confused with Charleston, and renamed it Wellsburg in honor of Prather's son-in-law, Alexander Wells.

      Wellsburg, at the time when Richardson moved there, boasted a Methodist Episcopal church, built in 1816, and the Baptist church which Alexander Campbell and John Brown had erected in the same year with contributions to which Nathaniel Richardson had made the first gift! There was a glass factory and a market house. John Brown, who was Alexander Campbell's father-in-law, owned a carding mill and grist mill, run by horse power. Wellsburg had its own boat yards. At the mouth of the Buffalo Creek, schooners were built which later sailed the open seas as far as Liverpool, England, laden with flour ground in Wellsburg mills. The town also had a busy river dock catering to the flourishing trade of flatboats and keelboats. [51]

      A four-page, four-column weekly newspaper, the Wellsburg Gazette, kept everyone informed of the news. This paper advertised hotel rooms at the Granite House and the Virginia House, boosted the stock of the Wellsburg and Washington (Pa.) Turnpike Company, and informed its readers that a riverbank wall was about to be erected along the town with money raised by a state lottery.

      Robert Richardson associated himself at once with the Baptist church of the "Reformers." Both Thomas and Alexander Campbell worshiped here, and the doctor found himself included in the warmest possible fellowship. He was soon an intimate part of the congregation.

      The same ties took him often to Bethany and into the company of those who found their way to Mr. Campbell's hospitality. Here he had the privilege of talking with Thomas Campbell and many of the influential leaders in the current reformation. It was here also that he was fortunate enough, on rare occasions, to meet with Walter Scott and renew the bonds of their earlier friendship. Discussions within this charmed social circle were lively and stimulating to the new advocate of reform.¹

      Robert Richardson was now in his twenty-fourth year. He was five feet ten inches in height and weighed about 130 pounds.² He walked rigidly erect, with his shoulders square, and his head high. This, together with his slender build, gave him the appearance of great height. Contemporary witnesses tell us that he was a little taller than Alexander Campbell. His voice was thin and naturally pitched in a high key. He spoke in a [52] conversational tone, which sometimes deepened into an expression of intense emotion.³ His manner was reserved and courteous; he gave the impression of possessing immense inner reservoirs of knowledge and of personal power.

      Caring little about stylish dress, he garbed himself modestly, frequently wearing a Prince Albert, which the times dictated for a physician or other professional man. Although he was always neat, he could never understand why anyone should preen himself to attract attention to his clothes. During the winter months his habitual headgear was a beaver or a felt hat, while the summer found him wearing a Panama. He was never known to don a cap, for he felt that this article of clothing was horribly ugly. Like other gentlemen, he wore fine boots, which he removed with a bootjack.

      Like most physicians, whose calls took them over a wide domain, Dr. Richardson rode horseback nearly everywhere he went. He hated riding in a carriage or buggy; riding in them made him "seasick"; but on his horse he was comfortable and happy. The tall, slender, quiet man riding astride his faithful mount soon became a familiar figure in Wellsburg and its vicinity. In his saddlebags he carried the usual remedies, a very few instruments, the bleeding howl, and his daybook.

      This daybook reveals that his first visit in Wellsburg was made on February 13, 1830. Almost from the first he enjoyed a good practice. Office calls and home visits kept increasing in number. Some patients paid, others were billed, and still others gave notes. Some accounts the doctor marked "lost," while other accounts he canceled out with the expressive word, "forgiven." His charges were uniformly moderate. With great care he [53] tabulated each visit, the nature of the ailment, and the remedy prescribed--usually in Latin.

      Having been schooled by the wise Peter Mowry, Dr. Richardson's practice of medicine differed widely from that of most physicians. He followed common-sense lines rather than the pedantic dogma of "the schools." With a patient and his family he conversed freely but in a slow manner. He never grew excited. Believing much of the medical practice of his day to be unscientific sham, he was plain and straightforward in his diagnosis and prescriptions. He spent much time teaching his patient the causes and conditions of illness; ignorance he conceived to be a great enemy to good health. Water supply, sewage and garbage disposal, bedroom ventilation, careful eating, regular habits, ample exercise, and a clean heart--these were the topics which he frequently discussed with patients as essentials of good health and the enjoyment of life. In his teaching he stressed right thinking, for he realized the close relation between mind and body, and he believed that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine." Into the well-kept ledger he frequently entered after a patient's name only three words: "Visit and advice."

      He decried "specifics" in medicine, refusing to countenance "sure cures" for baffling ailments. Instead, he trusted much to nature to restore its own balances. This being so, it is not surprising that he used home remedies in a large way. Teas such as were usually concocted by housewives received his sanction. Calomel, generally a highly touted remedy, he refused to use. He relied much upon herbs which he himself gathered from the fields or which the relatives of his patients were told to gather [54] under his direction. For colds in the chest or for sprained ligaments and muscles, he advocated plasters and poultices. Headaches he treated by placing the pounded leaves of horseradish on the sufferer's forehead or the back of his neck. Turpentine and lard was a common concoction which he used on the chest and throat of those victimized by severe colds. This application he bound into place with a large piece of red flannel.

      Wherever he went in his busy practice, he kept an exact record of each case, never relying on his memory. In his daily ledger he set down the ailment diagnosed under the date when he saw the patient, the medicines which he prescribed, and the exact amount of the dosage.

      Never posing as a surgeon, although he did the minor and emergency surgery which seemed necessary, he removed surface growths such as warts, moles, wens, and surface tumors, and lanced abscesses, boils, and carbuncles. He reduced fractures and set dislocated joints. But he was ever cautious, taking no chances with new procedures which had not been adequately tested and tried.

      In keeping with the practice of all physicians in his day, Dr. Richardson often turned dentist. "Ext. Dentis, 25 cents" was entered frequently in his daily ledger. Many who had nursed aching teeth for days finally mustered the needed courage and came to get relief. The doctor's tooth pulling was far from painless! Knowing nothing of treating the gums or using a needle to deaden pain, he simply made the extraction with an old-fashioned forceps, which he operated with a sort of cantilever twist, bringing out both the tooth and a yelp of pain from the patient simultaneously. The idea of saving teeth was not given a place in the health economy of that [55] day. Physicians were expected to practice destructive dentistry, and Dr. Richardson did his share.

      His medical ledger, which he kept with extreme care, shows some of his fees: pulling a tooth ("extracti dentis") was 25 cents; visit (regular) 50 cents to $3.00, depending on the distance and the time consumed; visits at night ("Noctu") were more expensive; vaccination ranged from 75 cents to $1.00; "excisio Tumor" he posted at $2.00. He even engaged to attend the family of Joe Perry, Wellsburg, one entire year for a covering fee of $10 an early application of the principle of health insurance! He sold medicines and drugs to his patients at current prices, ranging from 18 cents to 62½ cents and 93 cents per portion, depending on the remedy.

      If it was from practicing medicine that Robert made his living, it was in the current religious reformation that he found his life. Almost at once he began writing for Disciple magazines. Alexander Campbell abandoned the seven-year-old Christian Baptist in this year and began publishing the Millennial Harbinger. The first monthly issue appeared on Monday, January 4, 1830. The prospectus declared:

      This work shall be devoted to the destruction of sectarianism, infidelity, and antichristian doctrine and practice. It shall have for its object the developement and introduction of that political and religious order of society called THE MILLENNIUM, which will be the consummation of that ultimate amelioration of society proposed in the Christian Scriptures.⁴

      Richardson had written some articles for the Christian Baptist and he was pleased that he could now continue his [56] contributions in a magazine of more ample dimensions. The Harbinger was to be issued in monthly editions of forty-eight large duodecimo pages; at $2.00 per year if paid in advance, or $2.50 if payment was deferred until the end of the year.

      In the May number of the Millennial Harbinger, there appeared the first of eight articles on the general subject of "Regeneration," written by Robert Richardson. These he signed with his pen name, "Discipulus." This series of articles, seen and read by Alexander Campbell in advance of publication, broke mental ground for the Bethany editor.⁵ Richardson had taken a unique view of regeneration, one such as only a physician would have seen. Having officiated at the birth of numerous babies, his mind responded to the phrase "spiritual birth" in terms of physical birth. Although the birth of a baby was a cataclysmic experience, it did not change the nature of the infant, he pointed out; it merely changed his relations or his state. He was the same infant in or out of the womb, but he was not in the same state, for his relations were different. The actual beginning of the baby started long before its birth. In the same way, "in the spiritual world, a man who is born again has come forth from water as from the womb, having been previously begotten by the Spirit."⁶ This idea was luminous and inviting to Mr. Campbell and it set his mind to working along a new line, with the result that he began writing an extra for the Millennial Harbinger, his now famous Extra on the Remission o f Sins, producing it within two weeks. This sixty-page document had a remarkable circulation and a wide influence. Mr. Campbell later incorporated it into his book of theology, The Christian System. [57]

      Characteristically, Robert Richardson had seen more intimately into a rather minute aspect of a subject, and his scientific mind had yielded a new insight. Alexander Campbell, just as characteristically, had immediately envisioned that new insight in its larger implications. Having seen a whole new domain of truth illuminated by the doctor's pen, he had then taken up his own pen to write upon the subject with the bold sweep and the panoramic breadth which distinguished the literary presentation of his religious views. It was beginning already to be apparent that writer Richardson and editor Campbell would make a good team.

      Now, articles began fairly to tumble from the young doctor's pen. Over the nom de plume of "Alumnus" he wrote "Order Is Heaven's First Law" for the March Harbinger of 1831. Still over that name, there followed a new series on "Counterfeits," exposing fraudulent forms of Christianity.

      His friend Walter Scott, the cyclonic evangelist, was now living in Cincinnati and was there publishing his own monthly magazine, called the Evangelist (begun Jan., 1832). For this organ of the "Ancient Gospel," Robert began to write in its very first year.

      The first volume of the Evangelist carried three articles from "Discipulus." In these articles he dealt with miscellaneous topics. New ideas, he said in the first of these articles, always encounter opposition, noting that the new ideas of the current reformation were being accorded the same sort of reception. Nevertheless, opposition was far from being the full story: "The whole of our country is ripe for the harvest, and we have nothing to do but to thrust in our sickles and an abundant crop will be [58] gathered."⁷ In fact, to find a parallel to the stirrings of this day, one would have to go back to the New Testament itself.

      In his second article for the Evangelist, "Discipulus" touched upon one of the Disciples' weak spots, Christian stewardship:

      A few choice spirits among us . . . are preaching and teaching by day and night, spending their time . . . to build up and set in order the church of God; and who among us love them but in word?--who love them in deed, and in truth? . . .

      Brethren, the fountain of Christian benevolence is dried up among us. . . . The great Christian virtue of contributing to the necessities of those who are bearing reproach and shame, on account of Christ, and who are devoting their lives to the work of converting the world to primitive Christianity, is lost sight of.⁸

      In the same series he also commented on "walking by faith," declaring that "faith is one thing," while "walking by faith another." "Too many walk by sight or by feeling, and not by faith."⁹

      The doctor's meticulous attention to detail is noticed in his own copy of Walter Scott's Evangelist for January, 1833. In that issue an unsigned article on the topic "Jesus" appeared. With his proofreader's pencil, the doctor deleted the title and supplied another, "All-sufficiency of Christ"; he then corrected several typographical errors and finally wrote underneath the initials "R. R." In fact, he made his own marginal corrections throughout on all the pages of this issue, and at the bottom of the last page wrote this notation, "73 errors in this number!" [59]

      Walter Scott, the preacher and evangelist, did not have the patient exactitude required of a good proofreader; misspellings and inaccuracies crept past him, but the young physician had just the traits that the Cincinnati editor lacked. We are not surprised, therefore, when we learn that Walter Scott had visited Robert in Wellsburg the year before he launched the Evangelist and had expressly urged him to move to Carthage, adjacent to Cincinnati, where he could set up a practice of medicine and serve as coeditor of the new magazine. Richardson did not at once respond to his old friend's invitation, but he did continue to write, both for the Millennial Harbinger and for the Evangelist. In the latter publication, three articles on "Conscience" appeared. A January letter addressed to "Dear Walter" informed him, "I am writing a little piece for you which I hope to send shortly."

      Walter Scott was himself the chief reason why his friend Robert had not moved to Carthage immediately. Early in 1830 the Mahoning evangelist had been in Wheeling, where he had met the Encell family. A few days later he stopped in Wellsburg to visit the young physician.

      "I have just met the prettiest girl I have ever seen!" he announced.

      Sensing that there was more behind the words than appeared on the surface, Robert gave him instant attention. "Where?" he asked.

      "In Wheeling," Scott replied.

      "Who was she? What was her name?" Robert asked.

      "Rebekah Encell," his friend answered. [60]

      Robert knew the name of Encell. John Encell, Rebekah's father, had built one of Wellsburg's first glass houses. Together with John Brown and Alexander Campbell, he had been one of the officers of the Wellsburg church. And then, suddenly, he had died in 1829, and shortly afterward his family had moved to Wheeling.

      It was not long until Robert Richardson had occasion to visit the brethren in Wheeling. He contrived an introduction to Rebekah. She was all that Walter had said she would be and more. Robert fell instantly in love with her.

      Rebekah was tall, slender, and supple in build, graceful and unaffected as well as amazingly beautiful. Her disposition was gay and lively. She was joyously at home and happy in the company of other young people. She was just ten years younger than Robert, having also been born in Pittsburgh, September 10, 1816. In terms of the day, though only fourteen, she was of marriageable age.

      There followed an intensive courtship, lasting about a year. It was April 10, 1831, when Alexander Campbell himself united Rebekah and Robert in holy wedlock. The doctor's ledger reveals entries for April 8 and 11, but none for April 9 and 10. It seems that he was occupied by other matters during these two days "out of the office"!

      Robert brought his bride to live in Wellsburg. This was her old home. Having left the city quite recently, she was known and loved there. Since Rebekah was also a member of the reformation, they immediately took a prominent place in the work of the Wellsburg church.

      Shortly after the marriage, Robert's mother and his sister Jane came down to Wellsburg to visit them. His [61] father was still estranged. Jane, a truly dignified Richardson, was a member of the choir of the Trinity Episcopal Church. During the family worship which occurred in the midst of this visit, a small mouse came out and played around Jane's chair. Rebekah, seeing it, was convulsed with glee; unable to contain herself, she burst out into uncontrolled laughter, interrupting the devotions. This conduct somewhat shocked the sedate guests. They went away, not too sure that Robert had chosen the right bride.

      But concerning Rebekah Encell Richardson, the church at Wellsburg had no doubts. She had been known to them since childhood. She and Robert were taken into the bosom of the church and were soon busy in its activities. On September 6, 1832, the brethren passed this resolution: "That a congregational record be henceforth duly kept in a book provided for the purpose, and that R. Richardson be requested to act as clerk." Finding the church without any previous records, he procured a minute book and wrote in it a sketch of the previous history of the congregation, bringing it up to date and continuing the record carefully from the date of his appointment until he left the community. The same meeting that appointed him clerk also named him a member of a committee on "godly edification." Other members were Thomas Campbell, John Brown, F. W. Emmons, and H. N. Bakewell. This committee was asked "to consult together and make such arrangements for the proper ordering of the public exercises of the church, the times of meeting, etc., as may tend to promote the edification of the disciples, by calling forth the gifts of each member for the benefit of all." This meeting also voted to ask "Father Campbell" to take up his residence [62] in Wellsburg for the purpose of "assisting us in acquiring a knowledge of the scriptures and getting things into better order among us." To this request, Thomas Campbell acceded. On May 19, 1833, Robert Richardson's committee was reappointed and charged with the additional responsibility of disciplining offenders against the regulations of the church.

      On April 12, 1834, a general meeting of messengers from thirteen congregations, called by the brethren in Wheeling, was held in Wellsburg. The purpose of this meeting was to develop a system of cooperation. This was the first group attempt among Disciples to create some plan of interchurch organization to promote united effort which would at the same time completely safeguard the autonomy of the local churches against any attempted domination by the central body. Robert Richardson attended this meeting as a delegate of the Wellsburg church.

      While these events were taking place, there were happenings more private to the Richardson household, but not less important. Nathaniel Richardson II was born on January 13, 1833, son of the proud doctor who had delivered many babies, but never one so precious as this one! When Nathaniel I learned of this, his stubborn temper was unequal to the strain of natural affection, and the happiness of the fond parents was made to brim over in the reconciliation with little Nathaniel's grandfather. "A little child shall lead them."

      It now became possible for them to make plans to accept Walter Scott's invitation to move to Carthage and assist him as coeditor of the Evangelist. Accordingly, on June 8, 1834, the Wellsburg church records report, [63] "Rob't. Richardson and Rebekah Richardson requested a letter to the church at Carthage, Ohio: which was granted." Thereupon Robert Richards on resigned as clerk, as a member of the committee on godly edification, and as a member of the Committee of Cooperating Churches. He was replaced by Archibald W. Campbell.¹⁰

      Walter Scott, having in 1832 founded a flourishing church at Carthage, "seven miles along the Canal" from Cincinnati, had moved his family and his printing office to that village and now issued the Evangelist from that address. Yielding to the Carthage editor's urgent pressure, Dr. Richardson had decided to move to this village, become a medical partner to Dr. Wright, who was already established there, and to take up an editorial pen. Taking with him Rebekah and their first-born son and hugging to himself the joy of being again in the good graces of his father, he set out for this promised land with a singing heart. [64]

[HTB 51-64]