James Richardson

Richardson, James, son of the Hon. James Richardson, of Dedham, Massachusetts, was born in that town May 25, 1817, and graduated at Harvard College, 1837. After being engaged, first as a clerk of the county courts, and then in teaching, he entered the Divinity School at Cambridge, where he graduated in theology in 1845. Subsequently he was Unitarian Pastor at Southington, Connecticut, and then of the Unitarian Society in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Ill health compelled him to retire from his pastoral work to Dedham. During the war he joined himself to the hospitals at Washington, where he died Nov. 10, 1863. Mr. Richardson was well known as an Essayist, Poet, and Preacher. Two of his hymns, from Longfellow and Johnson's Book of Hymns, 1848, are still in common use: "From Zion's holy hill there rose " (One in Christ), and "How glad the tone when summer's sun " (Summer). We are indebted to Putnam's Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith, Boston, U. S. A., 1875, for these details.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)