author

Richard Darlington

1834–1906

Best remembered for a vivid firsthand-era account of the devastating 1877 tornado in Chester County, this Pennsylvania educator wrote with the eye of a local witness and schoolmaster. His work preserves both a dramatic natural event and the community around it.

1 Audiobook

A Full Description of the Great Tornado in Chester County, Pa.

A Full Description of the Great Tornado in Chester County, Pa.

by Richard Darlington

About the author

Born in West Marlborough, Pennsylvania, in 1834, Richard Darlington was an educator and writer closely connected to Chester County life. Local genealogical records identify him as the son of Richard and Edith Smedley Darlington, and sources on Darlington Seminary note that he took over Ercildoun Seminary in 1861.

He is chiefly associated today with A Full Description of the Great Tornado in Chester County, Pa., a contemporary account of the violent 1877 storm that struck the region. Because the seminary itself was badly damaged in that tornado, his writing carries the immediacy of someone describing a disaster that affected both his school and his wider community.

Darlington died in 1906. Though not a widely known literary figure, he remains an interesting regional author whose surviving work blends eyewitness reporting, local history, and nineteenth-century Pennsylvania life.