Lunsford Richardson

Lunsford Richardson was born in 1854 on a farm near Selma, North Carolina. He attended Horner and Graves School and Davidson College, where he graduated with highest honors in Latin in 1875. He taught at The Little River Academy before he became a pharmacist. He married Mary Lynn Smith, from Greensboro, North Carolina, in about 1884. They had two sons, H. Smith Richardson and Lunsford Richardson, and three daughters, Laurinda, Mary N. and Janet L.

Richardson bought a drugstore in Selma where he concocted and sold a menthol-laced ointment for "croupy" babies that he labeled "Vick's" in honor of Dr. Joshua W. Vick, his brother-in-law who helped him get established in business. Later he sold the store in Selma and bought one in Greensboro. (This was the Porter and Tate Drugstore – Dr. Porter was the uncle of William Sydney Porter, the author known as O. Henry.)