Biographical Note

Elva Curl Wilson was born in Hampton, Virginia, on December 31, 1911. The daughter of Curl Spencer Wilson and Elva Stanton Wilson, she graduated from Hampton High School, eventually becoming a teacher and librarian. (During the writing of these diaries, she worked as a bookkeeper and stenographer.) She married Rev. James C. Richardson, a graduate of Randolph-Macon College and Union Theological Seminary some time after 1935. Elva Richardson became an active partner in the ministry and mission work of her husband, appointed pastor of Swain United Memorial United Methodist Church on Tangier Island, Virginia in 1943. Richardson soon found himself at odds with his new congregation, and in 1946 he withdrew from the Methodist conference, forming a new non-denominational congregation on Tangier eventually known as the New Testament Church. The Richardsons remained on Tangier Island until approximately 1963, then went on to found two more churches, in Deep Creek, Virginia and Valdosta, Georgia. In 1997, the couple published a book about their experiences in establishing the New Testament Church, titled 7 Acres: the story of the New Testament Church on Tangier Island. Elva Curl Richardson, mother of three children, died August 4, 2006 in Richmond, Virginia.

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