Essex

RICH, John

Vermont Historical Magazine, No. XI, October 1867, p 1031
(extracted from a section on the history of Maidstone, Essex County, Vermont)

John RICH was born in 1729 in Germany, near the river Rhine. Hoping to find 
a government more in accordance with his ideas of political and religious 
liberty, he emigrated to America when a young man; married in or near Boston 
[Suffolk County], Massachusetts, by Rev. Samuel MERRILL, in 1753, to 
Catharine Sophia WHITEMAN, who also came from Germany, with her parents, when 
fourteen years of age. They were equally rich in energy, perseverance, and 
self-reliance, and commenced life with a mutual agreement to lay by a certain 
sum daily for future need. After a few years of pecuniary prosperity in 
Ashburnham [Worcester County], Massachusetts, they removed to Haverhill 
[Grafton County], New Hampshire. Mr. [John] RICH purchased the fine farm a 
few rods north of the court house, now owned by ex-Governor PAGE. While 
living in Haverhill he [John RICH] was employed by [the] government to 
furnish supplies to the continental army. His oldest son, John was also in 
the service of his country under Col. Timothy BEDLE. In March 1784 he moved 
to Maidstone. As there were no roads, the journey was made on the 
Connecticut River through many perils to himself and family, as well as the 
stock which he drove. Here he bought a large tract of land on the river, 
supposed then to be in Guildhall [Essex County, Vermont], of the SAWYERs, who 
had built three log houses and made some improvements on the same. The 
beautiful intervals known as the RICH meadows were then covered with a heavy 
growth of rock maple, elm, and butternut.

After some length of time another claimant came for the land, and there was 
no alternative, it was again paid for. Of this tract of land he made four 
farms, one each for three sons, John, Henry, and Jacob [RICH], reserving the 
homestead for his youngest son Moody [RICH], who has lived on the same 
seventy-eight years, and is now at the advanced age of eighty-two, the 
only person in town who was an inhabitant of the same when it was organized. 
The three sons above named [John, Henry, and Jacob] lived and died leaving 
families on the farms purchased by their father [John RICH].

Mr. [John] RICH [the father] was an energetic, enterprising man for the 
times, zealously engaged in whatever would promote the welfare of the town, 
not willing to entrust its interests committed to him in other hands, as one 
anecdote will show. He spoke with the brogue of his native land, and when in 
the legislature at one time he had an unusual amount of business to lay 
before the house. A young lawyer proposed to do the necessary talking on the 
occasion, saying, "Some may not readily understand you." Mr. RICH replied, 
"Do you understand me?" [to which the lawyer replied that he understood Mr. 
RICH perfectly]. "Then that is enough for you, I will do my own talking."

He [John RICH] was strongly democratic in principle, regarded the right of 
suffrage as a sacred inheritance, and enjoined its observance upon all 
freemen as a duty on which depended the freedom of the country, believing 
that through neglect of this the liberty of Germany was lost, and 
consequently the tyranny he had witnessed in his fatherland. He was moreover 
a warm friend of religion, and the observance of the Sabbath, always 
attending religious meetings when possible, and frequently hiring ministers 
for occasional services and paying them from his own purse. He was honest 
and upright in all business transactions; in his domestic relations kind and 
pleasant tempered. He [John RICH] died 31 September 1813, aged eighty-four 
years and six months.

Mrs. Catharine Sophia RICH was remarkable for industry, economy, and 
liberality, as well as an accumulating faculty that filled her house with an 
abundance from which she dispensed with bountiful hand to those in need, none 
such going empty-handed from her door. She [Mrs. Catharine S. RICH, nee 
WHITEMAN, widow of John] died 14 April 1818, aged eighty-two years.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly