John James Richmond

RICHMOND, HILMERS, GIBBS, DOWS, FISH, CLARK

Posted By: Emmet County IAGenWeb Coordinator (email)
Date: 3/10/2011 at 19:06:50

J. J. Richmond, shown above with his family, was one of the signers of a petition that was submitted to the District Court in the February term in the year 1900, asking for the incorporation of the town of Ringsted, Emmet County, Iowa. In January of that year he was proprietor of the Bravender & Gibbs business in Ringsted. In that year he was 25 years of age.

He was born, 17 years prior to the incorporation of the town of Armstrong, as John James Richmond on April 4, 1875. Like his older brother, Walter, he was born in a two-room log cabin on Section 36, Armstrong Grove Township, Emmet County, Iowa to Emmet County pioneers Matthew Richmond and Margaret [Cavers] Richmond. He was the last born and third son of their family of six children. He was likely named after his father’s two brothers John Moreville Richmond, D. D., a noted Presbyterian minister of the Shadyside Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, PA and James Richmond, of Ontario, Canada.

His siblings were Jeanette Richmond [Mrs. William Gibbs], Anna Richmond [Mrs. John Dows], William Cavers Richmond [who married Mildred Fish], Robina Elizabeth Richmond, and Walter Adam Richmond [who married Grace Eleanor Clark].

His parents were among the first residents of Emmet County and had settled in Armstrong Grove Township seven years earlier in 1868. They were each born in Scotland, he in Mauchline Ayrshire, Scotland, home of Scottish poet Robert Burns, and she near Hobkirk, Roxburghshire, Scotland, in the Borders Region between Scotland and England. They had married in 1858 in Ayr, Ontario where they then farmed and started their family. In 1868 they moved directly from Ayr, Ontario, Canada, via Lansing, Michigan, with John’s four oldest siblings, stopping enroute at the small community of Village Creek, near Lansing, IA, to visit Adam Cavers and other siblings of Margaret Richmond.

John James Richmond married Martha Louise Hilmers, whose images are shown in the family photo above, taken about 1938. They were parents to Ronald H. Richmond [1908-1910], Margaret Richmond [b. 1910], Miriam Richmond [b. 1914], Rachel Richmond b. 1916] and John Richmond, Jr. [b. 1918].

From the Atlas of Emmet County, Iowa, January 1910, J. J. Richmond owned the NW quarter of Section 34, of Armstrong Grove Township, consisting of 160 acres. He also operated a clothing store in 1911 in Swea City, Iowa. And was manager of the general store, lumber yard, bank and was the postmaster at Maple Hill, Emmet County, Iowa.

By 1919, at the time of his mother's death, he was living in Waterloo, Iowa and by 1921, at the time of his father's death, he was living in Portland, Oregon. He died in Portland, Oregon in November of 1972 at the age of 97.

Contributed by: James Richmond. Taken from the collection of Grace [Clark] Richmond. The Photo is courtesy of Grace Eleanor [Richmond] {Plath} Tyler.