Charlotte Auguste Lawrence, His first wife died in 1856, and in 1858 he married Miss Victoria Hamilton, of St. Louis. Ten years later, the second Mrs. Sass died, and in 1870 he married Louisa S. Leidy, of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, who is still living.

Of his first marriage, four children were born, none of whom survive. Three children were born of the second marriage, of whom Richard F. Sass, Jr. is now living and engaged in business in St. Louis. By his last marriage he has two children, Clinton Boyle and Lula Sass.

Sass, Richard F., who was long conspicuously identified with the steamboating interests of St. Louis, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, November 19, 1815, son of Edward G. and Mary S. Sass. He was one of a family of nine children, and the only one who survived beyond the Civil War period, his eldest brother, Jacob Keith Sass, a Charleston banker -- and the only other member of the family other than himself living at the time -- having died during the siege of Charleston as a result of the exposure to which he subjected himself while seeking to convey the funds of his bank to a safe place in the interior of the State.

Richard F. Sass was well educated in the schools of Charleston, and upon quitting school became connected with a large wholesale dry goods house of that city, in which he was employed until January of 1841. At that time he married Miss Charlotte Auguste Lawrence, of Boston Massachusetts, and immediately afterward went with his wife to the New England metropolis. After spending two months visiting their friends in Boston, the young couple decided to establish their home in the West and started for St. Louis, traveling by stage and canal-boat to Buffalo, New York. At Buffalo they took a steam propeller and were landed -- at the end of a long and tedious trip around the lakes -- at what was then little more than the village of Chicago. From Chicago they traveled by stage to Peoria, Illinois, over roads almost impassable in places, the passengers being compelled to disembark at frequent intervals to pry the stage out of the mud. At Peoria they took passage on the steamer "Mungo Park," and in due time arrived in St. Louis. . . . .Immediately after his arrival in St. Louis, Mr. Sass became connected with the line of packet-boats then plying between this city and Peru, Illinois, as clerk on the "Mungo Park," the boat which had landed him here. Later he was a clerk on the steamer "Panama," of the same line until he was made master of the steamer "Chicago," built and put into service as a United States mail boat.

After following the river some years, he abandoned it to become purchasing and shipping clerk in the large grain commission house of Tucker & Lawrence. After the failure of this house, his large acquaintance with river men prompted him to establish in St. Louis a general steamboat agency, through which he became the representative of nearly all the boats running on the upper and lower Mississippi, the Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio Rivers, and also of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. This agency he conducted successfully for many years and also operated a line of steamers between Jefferson City and Omaha, in connection with the Missouri Pacific Railway, after that line was completed to Jefferson City. During his long and active business career, he enjoyed the high esteem of all who were brought into contact with him, and in his old age has been regarded as one of the most interesting survivors of the golden era of steam boating on the Mississippi River and its principal tributaries.

His earliest church affiliations in St. Louis were with Christ Episcopal Church, then under charge of Rt. Rev. Cicero Hawes, bishop of Missouri. At a later date, he joined the Methodist Church, of which his second wife was a communicant, and has since been a faithful churchman of that denomination.