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- At the 1860 census they were at Ophir township, Oroville, Butte County, California. Henry was 40, born in Ohio; Elizabeth, 38, born in England; Caroline 14, born in Illinois. With them was "Isabella Lumbley", 33, also born in England, presumably a sister or other kinperson to Elizabeth.
Evidence that Henry Sisson Richardson was a son of Jesse Richardson:
First, Henry and Elizabeth Richardson had a son named John Cuddeback Richardson, born 1842 in Hancock County, Illinois, died 1928 in Gridley, Butte, California. In the 1850 census of Hancock County, Jesse Richardson, 66, and his wife Sarah, 65, are shown living with "Peter Cudderback", age 9, born in Illinois. Peter Cuddeback (1842-1914) appears to have been a son of Henry's sister Sarah Ann Richardson (1815-1885) by her husband, thus Henry's brother-in-law, John Cuddeback (1812-1870).
Second, a letter, 29 Sep 1931, from Artie Richardson Nugent to the War Department pension bureau, Washington, D.C.: "Dear Sirs — I am writing to get a record of my great grandfather, Jesse Richardson, who was the father of my grandfather Henry Sissons Richardson." Obviously the Revolutionary War soldier Jesse Richardson cannot have been Henry Sisson Richardson's father, but Artie Richardson's inadvertant conflation of the two Jesse Richardsons is understandable. It seems clear from the evidence that Henry Sisson Richardson was the soldier's grandson, through the soldier's namesake son.
The Richardson and Cuddeback families' relationship to Mormonism:
According to George C. Mansfield's History of Butte County, California (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1918), page 922, in 1837 Henry Sisson Richardson's abovenamed brother-in-law John Cuddeback "removed to Hancock County, Illinois, where he was a pioneer farmer and helped to drive the Mormons out of Nauvoo." Five years later, Henry Sisson Richardson and his wife Elizabeth Lumley named a son after John Cuddeback. It would be a stretch to suppose that this was specifically because they approved of his acts as a persecutor of early Mormons, but it certainly doesn't appear that they disapproved.
Henry Sisson Richardson's middle name may constitute a small historic irony. It's worth noting that the most recent common (known) ancestor of DDB and TNH is Christopher Champlin of Rhode Island (1656-1732). One of Christopher Champlin's great-great grandsons was TNH ancestor William Sisson Champlin (born 1792 in Vermont, died 1861 in Utah), whose family became Mormon in the 1830s and were as a consequence violently driven out of several parts of Missouri in which they attempted to settle in that decade. William Sisson Champlin got his middle name from his mother, a descendant of several generations of Sissons of Rhode Island. We know nothing about the origins, or even maiden name, of Henry Sisson Richardson's mother, but it would be poignant if, through her, he descended from some of the same Sissons.
Further from the History of Butte County, California (citation details above):
[…] Henry S. and Elizabeth (Lumly) Richardson. The former came from Ohio and the latter from England. [In 1844, Henry Richardson] moved the family to St. Louis, Mo.; and in the early spring of 1849, he started across the great plains in wagons drawn by ox teams, with his wife and children, arriving in Placerville in July of the same year. He soon engaged in mining in El Dorado County, then, the same year, in Butte County, on Feather River, near Bidwell's Bar, and later ran a general store at Slate Creek. In 1852 Henry Richardson returned East and in 1853 drove a band of cattle across the plains to California. He also did teaming out of Marysville, grading, and hauling lumber, and he also ran a livery stable. He erected a building in Marysville in 1854, on E Street, part of which is now standing, and also built a stable on F Street, a couple of years later.
In 1857, however, Mr. Richardson sold out and located in Oroville, and in the fall of 1860 he took up one hundred sixty acres on Dry Creek, near what is now Nelson. He bought land adjoining, both government and railroad land, until he owned seven hundred sixty acres. He farmed the same until 1872, when he sold out and moved to Oroville. In 1878, with his wife and some of his children, he drove a team across the plains to Grayson County, Texas, where he bought thirteen hundred acres. He was very successful in California, and carried with him to Texas, as the result of his long labors and investments here, a round sum of seventy-five thousand dollars. He died in Texas in 1880, honored both as a brave member of early vigilance committees and as an Odd Fellow.
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