Theopolis W. Richardson

Theopolis W. Richardson

This little sketch of the life of a notable but little-noted resident in the history of Sardis, Ohio, also presents a Blue and Gray slice of American history, and an extraordinary tale of improbable survival and untimely death.

When Theopolis W. Richardson died in his home on Wednesday, September 10, 1873 in Sardis, Monroe County, Ohio, he was 30 years, 1 month and 25 days old. He left behind his young widow Ella (nee Wiley) with five children, the youngest having just been born that spring. He also left behind a legacy of tenacious survival to which I owe my own existence. In his short life, Theopolis experienced military service in the civil war, multiple captures by the Confederates, health-crushing imprisonment in several southern prisons, including 14 months at Andersonville, Georgia, and survival of the greatest single-ship maritime disaster in world history: the explosion of the Steamship Sultana with the loss of 2,000 lives. His unlikely survival of this string of events made possible his postwar marriage and family of five children. Struggling health issues finally caught up with him, and he died a young man.


In 1860, Theopolis W. Richardson was living in Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia, in the household of his father, Joseph Richardson, a 43-year-old steamboat captain born in the West Indies. Theopolis's mother had died when he was fifteen and his little sister Ida was but two. At this ominous moment in American history, while our bloodiest war was brewing, Theopolis was a 17 year-old student.

The civil war arrived, and young Theopolis joined the West Virginia 1st infantry, Company A, on September 14th, 1861. He had his picture taken very soon thereafter with his corporal stripes, and the photograph has survived. Like many of the new recruits, but even more so than most, Theopolis looked too young to be a soldier: with a young face, thin build, narrow shoulders, he was frankly dwarfed by the long rifle he held uncertainly and inexpertly before him. According to his military papers, Theopolis was 18 years old and stood six-feet one with a fair complexion and grey eyes. Sitting for the photograph he could not have known what a phenomenal experience of improbable challenge and survival he would be required to suffer over the next four years - a survival experience to rival anything found in a historical novel.

Little is recorded of Theopolis' early military experience. However, in August 1862, he was captured while on patrol near Port Rebublic. By November, less than three months later, he had been paroled back to the Union lines as an exchanged prisoner, but his experience as a war prisoner had barely begun. He was a member of company A 1st West Virginia Infantry, 3rd Separate Brigade and 8th Army corps when he was once again captured at Petersburg, Virginia, on February 1, 1864. In his own words he "was scouting and got into the rebel Genl Early's Division which was marching to attack us." Unfortunately, the Union and Confederate armies by then were no longer exchanging prisoners.

According to a later account by his postwar doctor, Theopolis was sent to Belle Isle prison in Richmond, Virginia. Belle Isle was hardly a "prison" at all, but rather an exposed camp in the middle of the James River. The prisoners were mostly without shelter and were poorly fed. When the Union army threatened to close upon Richmond, the Confederate authorities moved the prisoners out. Theopolis, however, was out of the frying pan and into the fire. His next stop, apparently after staging in a Richmond ware-house prison, was Andersonville, Georgia, a new stockaded prison soon to become infamous as a place of criminal neglect, disease,and violence.

Of those who went to Andersonville with Theopolis when the stockade first opened, very few survived the 14-month ordeal of its starving, overpopulated, disease-ridden existence. Of all those who went to Andersonville during the war, 13,000 died. Among other horrors, the prisoners were fed uncooked corn with the cobs ground-in, a foodstuff that tore the insides. The doctor who treated Theopolis in later years observed the lasting havoc the experience wreaked upon his body:
"I found him suffering from chronic diarrhea. He had pain in his stomach and bow(els his head ached and some pain in his back near his kidneys. His bow(e)ls would swell at times and become very sore about two years before he died his bow(e)ls was sore and swollen for 8 weeks..." He was in Andersonville prison 14 months and he was in Belle Isle three month (and) during this time he was very near starved to death."
In large part Theopolis survived Andersonville prison because he was assigned to the Bakery, a position which permitted him to spend much of his time outside the prison walls. In 1866 Theopolis later testified, in a Savannah court, on behalf of a Confederate James Duncan, who had selected him for the bakery detail and thereby saved his life. Finally, according to information Theopolis provided during the Duncan Trial, after 14 months of imprisonment, he escaped. Unfortunately, there are no surviving details about his time after his escape, but in any event, Theopolis' survival ordeal was by no means over. In the spring of 1865, thousands of Union soldiers, including Theopolis, were loaded aboard steamers at Vicksburg, Mississippi, to begin their journey home. Many of these same soldiers, like Theopolis, had spent 14 months or more in Confederate prisons. Theopolis himself boarded a steamer soon to become famous as a death-trap, the ill-fated and overcrowded Sultana. At 2 a.m., on April 28, 1865, in the middle of the cold and rain-swollen Mississippi river, just above Memphis, the Sultana's poorly patched boilers gave way, and she blew up. The Sultana disaster is still the worst single-ship maritime disaster in history, surpassing even the Titanic disaster of 1912. Theopolis was in the water three hours as the explosion took place according to a later account, and "he very near froze to death." A contemporary Memphip newspaper report listed Theopolis among the survivors recuperating in the Soldier's Home.

After his personal odyssey, Theopolis the young soldier, Theopolis the twice captured, Theopolis the convalescent survivor, at length made it home -- to Wheeling.

By December of 1865, Theopolis had recovered enough to marry Mary Ellen Wiley, also a life-long resident of Wheeling. Theopolis' father Joseph and his second wife Sarah C. (nee Richards) had moved to Sardis in that same year with Ida, Theopolis' little sister, and the newest half- brother Joseph. Theopolis and Mary Ellen (Ella) also settled in Sardis and began their own family. Theopolis and Ella had five children: Alice, 1866, Joseph, 1868, Eugene Wiley, 1870, Maud, 1872 and Amy, February of 1873. Theopolis must have worked for his father Joseph, who owned a store on the busy water-front town Sardis. Oral history has it that Theopolis ferried goods up and down the Ohio river. The last census upon which Theopolis was recorded listed him as a retired dry goods merchant, at the young age of 27. Finally, in September of 1873, Theopolis' wartime experience caught up to him. He died evidently of war-related ailments. There is some discrepancy in the records as to exactly how he died- according to his death certificate, cholera killed him. We know from the doctor's affidavit in the widow's pension file that Theopolis suffered long and debilitating stomach and bowel problems, and his doctor credited his death to bowel complications resulting from his war experience of near-starvation and eating ground corn cobs.

His widow Ella Richardson was left a very poor woman with a large family. Theopolis left no will or estate, and apparently did not even own the house they lived in. Ella bought the house from her father-in-law soon after Theopolis's death. Ella raised her children in Sardis living another 50 years, until 1923. Ella married David W. Skinner in 1883, but he died in 1888. She reverted to her original married surname Richardson. Ella sent the eldest daughter Alice to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in 1879 for an education. Ella's sister Katherine Wiley, was a matron in this institution in Xenia, Ohio. Alice graduated at the age of 16, in 1882 and went on to earn a teaching certificate. Eventually Alice married a doctor, Sheridan C. Griffith and though their three children were born in Sardis, the Griffith's moved in Columbus, Ohio around 1915. Alice was appointed the first women post mistress in Ohio.

Ella applied for the Widow's Pension she was entitled as widow of a Civil War veteran, and in 1903 a pension for the youngest child Amy, who was born mentally weak. The pension file is the only written account of her second marriage, other than a marriage license filed in Monroe County. She was only eligible for the pension because she was widowed a second time in 1888, and David Skinner, her second husband had not served during the war.

Theopolis was buried in Sardis Cemetery, Sardis, Monroe County, Ohio. His grave stone is still there. When I visited the grave in 1998, I was delighted to see his grave decorated by the GAR in honor of his war service. In 2005 an organization asked my permission to place a marker at the base of the gravestone commemorating Theopolis's Andersonville and Sultana disaster experiences. Those of us who are descendants of Theopolis Richardson honor him for the hardships and sufferings he endured during his short life, and indeed, we owe him a gratitude for our very existence.