Joseph Havens Richards (born Havens Cowles Richards; November 8, 1851 – June 9, 1923) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who became a prominent president of Georgetown University, where he instituted major reforms and significantly enhanced the quality and stature of the university. Richards was born to a prominent Ohio family; his father was an Episcopal priest who controversially converted to Catholicism and had the infant Richards secretly baptized as a Catholic.
Richards became the president of Georgetown University in 1888 and undertook significant construction, such as the completion of Healy Hall, which included work on Gaston Hall and Riggs Library, and the building of Dahlgren Chapel. Richards sought to transform Georgetown into a modern, comprehensive university. To that end, he bolstered the graduate programs, expanded the School of Medicine and Law School, established the Georgetown University Hospital, improved the astronomical observatory, and recruited prominent faculty. He also navigated tensions with the newly established Catholic University of America, which was located in the same city. Richards fought anti-Catholic discrimination by Ivy League universities, resulting in Harvard Law School admitting graduates of some Jesuit universities.
Upon the end of his term in 1898, Richards engaged in pastoral work attached to Jesuit educational institutions throughout the northeastern United States. He became the president of Regis High School and the Loyola School in New York City in 1915, and he was then made superior of the Jesuit retreat center on Manresa Island in Connecticut. Richards died at the College of the Holy Cross in 1923.
Early life
Richards was born on November 8, 1851, in Columbus, Ohio. His parents were Henry Livingston Richards and Cynthia Cowles, who married on May 1, 1842, in Worthington, Ohio. Havens Cowles was the youngest of eight children, three of whom died in infancy. His surviving siblings were: Laura Isabella (b. 1843), Henry Livingston, Jr. (b. 1846), and William Douglas (b. 1848).
Henry Livingston Richards was an Episcopal priest and the pastor of a church in Columbus. To the surprise of many, on January 25, 1852, he sought to convert to Catholicism, two months after Havens Cowles's birth. He was said to have been moved during a visit to New Orleans, where he saw whites and enslaved blacks receiving the Eucharist side by side at the altar rail in a Catholic church. He was baptized by Caspar Henry Borgess at the Holy Cross Church in Columbus. One day, following his conversion, he sneaked out of the house with the infant Havens Cowles and brought him to Holy Cross, where Havens Cowles Richards was also baptized by Borgess. These two conversions disturbed Havens Cowles's mother, Cynthia, who was Episcopalian, and her relatives encouraged her to leave her husband. Likewise, Henry Livingston was ostracized by his family and acquaintances in Ohio. As a result, he abandoned his ministry and moved to New York City to search for work in business, leaving his family in the care of his father in Granville, Ohio. While there, Cynthia Cowles followed her husband in converting to Catholicism. She moved with her children to Jersey City, New Jersey, in September 1855 and was conditionally baptized on May 14, 1856, at St. Peter's Church. All the other children were eventually baptized as well.
Ancestry
Richards was born into a prominent family that traced its lineage to colonial America on both his paternal and maternal sides. His uncle was Orestes Brownson, a Catholic activist and intellectual. On his mother's side, he was a descendant of James Kilbourne, a colonel in the U.S. Army who led a regiment on the American frontier in the War of 1812, founded the city of Worthington, Ohio, and became a United States Representative from Ohio.
On his father's side, Richards's lineage included combatants in the American Revolutionary War, such as William Richards (his great-grandfather), who led a contingent of troops that took part in the siege at the Battle of Fort Slongo and who later fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill as a colonel. Through William Richards, he traced his ancestry to James Richards, who was documented in 1634 as residing on the Eel River in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Education
Richards's father sought to send all his children to Catholic schools but was at times unable to. Therefore, Richards attended both Catholic and public schools in Jersey City. At the age of fourteen, he quit school and took up work as a bookkeeper for his father. Four years later, the two of them moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where they worked in the steel industry.