Andrew J. Richards

Andrew J. Richards

14 September 1830 - 30 August 1901


Andrew J. Richards

Rev. Andrew J. Richards was born in New York, September 14, 1830. His parents settled in lower Michigan, when he was only one year old. He was reared in the then almost wilderness country between Monroe and Detroit. His boyhood was spent on the farm with the limited school advantages of that early day.

In 1849 he married Lucina Wait. Fifty-two years of ideal wedded life followed. Rarely, indeed, are husband and wife so perfectly one as were Brother and Sister Richards. For fifteen years they lived on their farm. But constrained by the voice of the Spirit and the voice of the church, he felt his call into the itinerant ministry. In September, 1864, at Adrian, he joined the Detroit Conference. After serving five successive charges, he served two terms as Presiding Elder.

In 1883 he was appointed agent of “frontier work,” and spent his time in promoting the building of churches in the Alpena District, and in soliciting aid to pay towards them, and the next year was made agent of the Superannuated Preachers’ Aid Society. He continued in this office two years when broken health compelled him to seek rest for one year in the supernumerary relation. Then resuming active work, he served the Bay City churches until in 1894 he took the relation of superannuate after more than thirty years of service. His widow and two children survive him.

Brother Richards was a man of strong understanding, of unusually discriminating judgment, and of broad, generous sympathies. He was a brother beloved in every charge he served. He numbered many leading men in all churches as his warm friends. He was especially successful as a church financier. At the same time his warm evangelistic spirit and deep religious experience made him an unusual soul winner. For many years, and at his decease, he was a trustee of our denominational concerns at Bay View. That great Methodist rendezvous was the scene of some heroic efforts on his part. At Bay View he heard the call from labor to reward. Although stricken in years, his departure seems untimely in the eyes of those who knew him as one so diligent in his Lord’s vineyard. Amid great suffering he maintained a sweet trust, and was faithful unto the end. On Friday afternoon, August 30, 1901, at three o’clock, with his wife and son and daughter by his side, the silver chord was loosed and one of the choicest spirits of Michigan Methodism went home to God. The funeral service was held in Saginaw where for one year Brother and Sister Richards had made their home with their son. Addresses were tenderly spoken by the pastor Rev. Wilbur F. Sheridan, and Rev. William H. Shier, while Revs. William M. Ward, William B. Pope and John G. Haller assisted in the exercises. His memory is precious.

- Detroit Annual Conference minutes of 1901, pp. 62-63

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