Although apparently misidentified in this photo as Cicero Harris Richardson, Cicero M. Richardson, his wife Sarah Harris Richardson, and and their children appear to have been the first members of the extended Richardson-Harris family to come to Cleveland, arriving no later than 1852. (A Cleveland cemetery record notes the death of his 3-year old son in that year.) He was a leader in Cleveland's early black community, who aided runaway slaves in the Underground Railroad to travel from northeast Ohio to Canada. In 1858, he participated in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, suffering a serious injury during the rescue effort. The related Richardson and Harris families were very influential in the cultural and intellectual development of Charles W. Chesnutt, both when he was a boy living on Hudson Street in Cleveland from 1858-1866, and later when he was a teenager and young adult living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, from 1866-1883. | Source: Negro History Bulletin, October 1949, Vol. 13, No. 1, at page 5.Download Original File
Source
Negro History Bulletin, October 1949, Vol. 13, No. 1, at page 5.
