Alfred Newton Richards was born in Stamford, New York, U.S.A., on 22 March 1876, the youngest of three sons of the Rev. Leonard E. and Mary Elizabeth (Burbank) Richards. His father, who was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Stamford from 1864 until his death in 1903, was a descendant of Godfrey Richards, an emigrant from the Rhenish Palatinate to Pennsylvania about 1740. His mother’s ancestors came from England to New England prior to 1640 and, unlike the Richards line (all of whom were farmers), many of them received a college education and several (including her father) were clergymen. She herself was teaching at a school in Norwalk, Ohio, when she first met her future husband. At the time she lived in the home of the Rev. Alfred Newton, who is still referred to as one of the most influential and beloved of Norwalk’s inhabitants, and whose daughter, Martha Newton, was the future Mrs Richards’s best friend. This is the source of the name Alfred Newton Richards. Life in the Richards’s home in Stamford centred around church activities and, by present standards, was quite austere. During most of the period the total income was less than $1000 a year, on which the family maintained a universally respected position in community affairs, put three sons through college, and set enough money aside to keep Mrs Richards in her home after her husband’s death without assistance from her sons or anybody else. In Dr Richards’s own words: ‘We were poor, but like Eisenhower’s folks we were unaware of it.’
Alfred Newton Richards, 1876-1966