Richard Olney was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, September 15, 1835,
and is of English ancestry. He received his preliminary education at
Leicester academy, and graduated with high honors at Brown university
in 1856. He was graduated with the degree of bachelor of laws from
Harvard law school in 1858, and was admitted to the bar in the
following year, entering the office of Judge Benjamin F. Thomas, with
whom he was associated for ten years. Mr. Olney made a specialty of
the laws relative to wills, estates and corporations. In 1893 he was
appointed attorney-general by President Cleveland. By his advice Mr.
Cleveland called out regular troops, July, 1894, to suppress the
rioting that followed on the Chicago American railway union strike. In
March, 1895, he successfully defended that action in an argument before
the Supreme Court in the habeas corpus proceedings brought by Eugene V.
Debs, who had been convicted of inciting the strikers. Upon the death
of Walter Q. Gresham, Mr. Olney was appointed secretary of state and
took office June 10, 1895. He was married, in 1861, to Agnes Park,
daughter of Benjamin F. Thomas, of Boston.