Missionary in Canada, born at Ramelton, county Donegal, Ireland. His parents were members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPC) or 'Covenanters'. He received a sound basic education with a view to entering the ministry of the RPC, but in his teens was influenced by Methodist fellowship and literature (including Fletcher's works) and became a Methodist despite parental opposition. In 1819 he emigrated to New Brunswick and, after a short period in a law office and teaching, was received on trial for the ministry of the WM Church and ordained in 1825.
For the first ten years he served in the Atlantic provinces. A letter to the WM Missionary Committee on 31 March 1824 describes a dangerous journey through uninhabited woods in Nova Scotia, when he suffered from serious frost-bite. A period of ministry in Montreal led to his appointment as the first Principal of Upper Canada Academy at Coburg in 1836, which provided its pupils with a sound secondary education. Tensions arose, however, within the academic board between a group sensitive to (British) WM interests (with which Richey identified) and a (Canadian) Methodist Episcopal group, which included John Ryerson. As a result, Richey was replaced as Principal in 1839, a move which was to foreshadow deeper divisions.
When the 1833 union of Methodist Episcopal and WM was dissolved in 1840, Richey identified with the WMMS, dismissing the Canadian Conference as 'not properly a church of God, but a neo-political faction'. He was to the fore in a related controversy concerning the Christian Guardian, the Methodist weekly published in Toronto, claiming that under Egerton Ryerson's editorship it took sides in party politics and was full of 'abominable misrepresentations'.
When Methodist union was restored in 1847, he again emerged as a leader, serving as a District Chairman for three years in the 1840s and as President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference of Canada in 1849 and 1850. Following a accident when his horse bolted and he was thrown from a carriage, he returned to the Eastern districts, partly because of continuing antipathy towards the Ryerson brothers. He again became President, this time of the Eastern British America and Newfoundland Conference from 1856 to 1860 and again in 1867.
Among his publications were a biography of William Black (1839) and Sermons delivered on various Occasions (1840). Undoubtedly gifted, he was politically and ecclesiastically conservative and viewed by many as proud and tactless. He died on 23 October 1883 at the official residence of his eldest son, the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia.
Entry written by: NWT
Category: Person
Comment on this entry