Sunday, June 8, 1919

Cloudy day. To church & S.S. Miss Bacon talked in S.S. Some rain at night. Took nap in P.M. Mary Carlton here. No Epworth League. Baccalaureate service at night. Mr. Richmond spoke at First Presbyterian Church.

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We can see that Nettie Bacon is still in town, talking at Sunday School--about her mission, no doubt.

I can't find out who Mary Carlton is; she's not in the Closson Genealogy, and I don't find her in census records or the city directory.  Maybe later Stanford will give us a clue. Or perhaps someone reading this knows who she was?

Mr. Richmond is actually Rev. Dr. Charles Alexander Richmond, the president of Union College and Chancellor of Union University (which includes the graduate school and Albany Medical College, among others) from 1909 until 1928. Dr. Richmond was a minister in the Presbyterian church up until he became president. He was a popular president, by most accounts, and he was also a poet of some note. Here is a poem he wrote that was published in 1917 in A Treasury of War Poetry:

A Song 

And the lilies of France are pale,

And the poppies grow in the golden wheat,

For the men whose eyes are heavy with sleep,

Where the ground is red as the English rose,

And the lips as the lilies of France are pale,

And the ebbing pulses beat fainter and fainter and fail.

Oh, red is the English rose,

And the lilies of France are pale.

And the poppies lie in the level corn

For the men who sleep and never return.

But wherever they lie an English rose

So red, and a lily of France so pale,

Will grow for a love that never and never can fail.

His poetry writing even captured the attention of The New York Times. On March 5, 1916, the newspaper published an article about his avocation entitled, "A College President Who Writes War Songs." Below is his picture:

Rev. Dr. Charles A. Richmond