Bartlett Richards
| Bartlett Richards | |
|---|---|
Richards with his children (ca. 1910)
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| Born |
Bartlett Richards January 6, 1862 |
| Died | September 5, 1911 (aged 49) |
| Cause of death | Heart Failure |
| Education | Phillips Academy |
| Occupation | Rancher |
Bartlett Richards (January 6, 1862 – September 5, 1911) and his brothers DeForest Richards and Jarvis Richards were cattle barons who owned or fenced in vast acreage in Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado.
Born on January 6, 1862, in Weathersfield, Vermont, the son of a Congregational church pastor. At the age of ten, after his father died, Richards was sent to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. After graduation in August 1879, Richards moved west to Cheyenne, Wyoming to recover his health in the outdoors, a prescription similar to that given later-President Theodore Roosevelt. Bartlett Richards, however, remained in the west and later married his niece.
Richards quickly became involved with ranching activities. By 1881, he was managing three ranches in Wyoming and a year later was put in charge of Lakotah and Rocky Mountain Cattle Companies. In 1883, representing Abram Stevens Hewitt, Richards took over the Bronson Ranch (which was renamed the Lower 33) in Sioux County, Nebraska.
In 1885, Richard's elder brother, DeForest Richards, moved west to open a bank in the boomtown of Chadron, Nebraska, which had just been reached by the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad. That year, Congress also passed the Van Wyck fence law, which prohibited barbed wire fences from blocking cattle roads to market and access to water sources. Bartlett was named vice president of the bank and in 1887 became president of Chardon's First National Bank, in addition to his ranching activities.
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