William Heizer Richardson

Born: 18 May 1806 Craven County, North Carolina

Died: 9 Mar 1848 Puebla, Mexico

No photos available

First Sgt, Company E, 4th Tennessee Infantry, USA

23 Oct 1847-9 Mar 1848

William Heizer was the son of Andrew Heizer Richardson Sr and Elizabeth "Betsy" McCoy.  He married Sarah Goslin, daughter of John Goslin Jr and Sarah Gaskins in 1828 in Craven County, North Carolina.  They had two children born in Craven County before they migrated to Tennessee in 1832.  They had a total of nine children between 1830 and 1846.  Sarah was an only child but William Heizer had five siblings living when they left North Carolina.  None of the other family came with them to Tennessee.  Andrew Heizer's will indicates that he died in possession of 17,000 acres of land and over 20 slaves.  What happened to William Heizer's inheritance is unknown but he appears to have arrived on Mine Lick Creek without a lot of resources.  

When William Heizer decided to enlist to fight in the Mexican War, he took his oldest living son (age 15), William Andrew, with him to the Army and left his wife on Mine Lick Creek with seven children ages 14 to one.  He died of "unspecified illness" in Puebla, Mexico.  William Andrew, his son, lived through the war and returned to Mine Lick Creek.  William Heizer's body is in a unknown grave in Mexico.  An "in memory of" Veterans tombstone is erected next to his wife in the Richardson Cemetery on Mine Lick Creek.

The Roberts and Richardson homesteads were about a mile apart on Mine Lick Creek.  Six years after William Heizer's death, Francis Marion Roberts married his daughter, Sarah.  Many of us descendants can claim William Heizer Richardson and Sarah Goslin as our fore-parents.