Pleasant Richardson
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Pleasant Richardson (c. 1845- May 30, 1935) was a resident of Fincastle in Botetourt County, Virginia, where he was a former slave, a property owner, and Civil War veteran.
Pleasant Richardson was born to his slave parents, Patrick and Martha Richardson, on the nearby Edward Johnson family plantation, Lauderdale, in about 1845. His name is not listed on the 1850 census of Botetourt County.[1] However, an inventory of the plantation was taken in 1853 when Edward Johnson died, and listed the 50 slaves present on the farm. Pleasant was the third youngest in the family. The siblings included Will, Louis, Maria, Adaline, Taylor and Joe.[2]
Civil War
During the third year of the Civil War, he fled the plantation and crossed the border to Grafton, West Virginia, in 1864. There at age 19, he enlisted in Company F of the 45th United States Colored Infantry Regiment. This was the single black regiment assigned to West Virginia, and was composed mostly of escaped slaves and some freedmen from Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
"He served with the 45th Infantry of the U.S. Colored Troops, a posting that took him to West Virginia and Pennsylvania, then Washington, D.C., and in the spring of 1864, he was one of 30,000 Union soldiers who undertook the ill-fated Red River Campaign across Louisiana. Roughly one in five men on the Union side died during that expedition, but Richardson survived and the following year he was present when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, according to a 1935 article in the Fincastle Herald."[3]