Hester Crawford Dorsey Richardson (1862-1933)
Hester Crawford Dorsey was born in 1862 in Baltimore. She, along with Louisa C. Osburne Haughton, founded the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore in 1890. Though the two founders were offered the presidency of the Club, they both refused, seemingly out of modesty. Shortly after marrying journalist Albert Richardson in 1891, she resigned her second vice presidency and moved to New York, becoming an honorary member of the Club. Richardson paid frequent visits to the Club thereafter, clearly proud of what it had become. Richardson was well known for her poems, including “Dethroned” which was dedicated to Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph, who gladly thanked her, as well as a series of articles she published under the penname “Selene” in the Baltimore American, the “Selene Letters.” She was also fascinated by genealogy; Side-lights on Maryland History (1913), originally published serially in the Baltimore Sun, was one of her best-known works.
Relation
Albert Levin Richardson
Sources
“Woman’s Literary Club. Mrs. Wrenshall Gives a Review of the Year’s Work, and Mrs. Richardson Reads a Paper.” Baltimore Sun, June 7, 1899.
“Hester Crawford Dorsey Richardson.” Find a Grave. Accessed May 1, 2018.
“Woman’s Literary Club. Sirs. Albert L. Richardson, of Pittsburg One of the Founders, the Guest of Honor.” Baltimore Sun, Apr. 5, 1899.
Willard, Frances E., ed. A Woman of the Century: Fifteen-Hundred Biographies with over 1,400 Portraits, Vol. 2 (Buffalo, NY: Moulton, 1892), 617.
Crane, Frank and Edward Jewitt Wheeler, ed. Current Opinion, Vol. 5 (New York: The Current Literature Publishing Co., 1890), 91.
“Books and Authors.” The Current, Oct. 9, 1886: 239. (Note: Dorsey’s poem “Good-by” is also published on page 230.)
“General Gossip of Authors and Writers.” Current Literature, August 1890.
Requardt, Cynthia. “Club History.” The Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. Accessed May 5, 2018. http://loyolanotredamelib.org/Aperio/WLCB/club-history