36 FACTS RELATING TO GROTON, MASSACHUSETTS. 



field in 1870. The youngest child, Jedediah Huntington Richards, 

 practised medicine in Cincinnati, but his health was poor and he 

 returned to the East and died in Washington, Conn. 



Henry Augustus Richards, the eldest child, born in New London 

 November 14, 1801, for some years was engaged in the manufacture 

 of cottons at Uncasville, Connecticut. His health, however, was not 

 sufficiently rugged to stand the strain incident to his position, and in 

 the hope of bettering it, his mill was handed over to Charles Lewis, 

 son of his uncle James a wealthy resident of New London, and 

 he undertook the selling of the cotton goods in New York City. 

 The change proved, however, detrimental, and his physician ordered 

 a country life and out-of-door living. So he bought a farm in Groton, 

 Massachusetts, and here came to live in the year 1 841, just after the 

 death of President Harrison. The estate which he bought had been 

 previously owned by the father of Margaret Fuller, and in the immediate 

 neighborhood of the Lawrence Farm. It occupied one of the finest 

 sites in Groton, on Pleasant Street at the beginning of Farmers' Row. 

 It is now owned by the Hon. William F. Wharton, formerly Assistant 

 Secretary of State. 



When Mr. Richards 'came t« Groton he brought with him a wife, 

 five sons and three daughters, and here were born to him another son 

 and another daughter. The old mansion on Pleasant Street where 

 Timothy Fuller and his daughter Sarah Margaret had toiled amid 

 shadows, now was the sunny scene of hospitality, of matronly grace, 

 and of youthful glee and beauty. The daughters were noted for their 

 lovely faces and charming manners, and as they grew up it was a dis- 

 puted point among their admirers as to which one was the hand- 

 somest. According to my remembrance at a later date than the 

 Groton days, the young men were chronologically divided in opinion 

 into sets, each set deciding in favor of that girl whose age was just a 

 little less than their own. The daughters themselves, however, seem 

 to have been a unit in their judgment. They agreed with Milton : 

 " the loveliest of her daughters, Eve," and unanimously awarded the 

 palm to their mother. 



The mother was Julia Ann Haughton, daughter of William and 

 Olive (Chester) Haughton, and sister of that James Haughton who 

 married Eliza Richards, as previously mentioned. She was born May 

 28, 1805 at Montville, Connecticut, and married Mr. Richards on 

 August 3, 1824 at New London. I never saw her, but her portrait, 

 painted by her cousin Daniel Huntington, the well-known artist of New 

 York, graces the home of one of her daughters. Of her charming 



