William Blaney Richardson Explained

William Blaney Richardson (19 March 1868, in Boston, Massachusetts – 1 December 1927, in Matagalpa, Nicaragua) was an American-Nicaraguan naturalist and professional collector of zoological specimens.^[1]

As a young man, Richardson was employed by Charles B. Cory to collect bird specimens in the West Indies.^{[1] [2]}

While collecting specimens in Mexico, Richardson married the Mexican citizen Rosaura Ojeda. When he and his wife moved to Nicaragua, he changed his middle name from "Blaney" to "Blaine".^[3]

In southwestern Colombia from November 1910 to July 1911 and from August 1912 to October 1912, Richardson collected many mammalian specimens.^[4]

One of his daughters married Francisco Navarro, Vice President of Nicaragua from 1937 to 1939, and one of his grandsons, Bill Richardson, was Governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011.

Notes and References

1. Book: Beolens, Bo. Watkins, Michael. Grayson, Michael. Eponym Dictionary of Mammals. 340. 2009. Johns Hopkins University Press. 978-0-8018-9304-9. The two mammalian species names for Richardson's mountain rat and Richardson's shrew mouse are associated with the mammalogist William Bebb Richardson.
2. Cory, Charles B.. A List of the Birds Collected by Mr. W. B. Richardson, in the Island of Martinique, West Indies. The Auk. April 1887. 4. 2. 95–96. 10.2307/4067107. 4067107 .
3. http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=gar3131&id=I9430 RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: Gary Allen Richardson Ancestry
4. http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/bitstream/handle/2246/1826/B035a18.pdf?sequence=1 List of Mammals Collected in Colombia by the American Museum of Natural History Expeditions, 1910–1915 by J. A. Allen